Rahul versus Modi: LS session reveals two different approaches to politics

There was an eerie predictability about the disruptions and manufactured controversies that greeted the brief, inaugural session of the Lok Sabha last week. Inspired by what it perceived was its great success in denying the ruling BJP an outright majority on its own, opposition can now be expected to reduce Parliament to a boisterous slugfest. The underlying belief is that agitational politics both inside and outside Parliament will expose the Narendra Modi government’s fragility and make governance difficult. Since BJP had crafted its election plank on the promise of providing a smooth ride to its Viksit Bharat destination, opposition now believes it is positioned to throw a spanner in the works, at least at frequent intervals over the next five years.On his part, Prime Minister Modi has entered his third term with a business-as-usual approach. The selection of senior ministers suggests that continuity will be the hallmark of the government. The restiveness apparent in different layers of BJP, not to mention the wider Sangh Parivar, at the reduction of the government’s majority and the big losses in UP, Maharashtra and West Bengal, has not found expression in the functioning of the government. Whether this insouciance is strategy or merely an interim decoy pending a more considered assessment of the outcome is not known. However, govt strategists need to consider the mismatch between the unbridled optimism of stock markets and a mood of tentativeness among people over the future.No doubt some of the question marks have arisen out of the episodic anger over the NEET turmoil. There are suggestions that the Agniveer issue is also on a slow burning fuse. There will be other such hiccups that the govt will have to confront in the future. What matters is whether its sincerity of purpose is accepted by the public.However, BJP’s loss of seats has also been accompanied by a media-inspired resurrection of tensions involving the RSS, a facet of public life that had been eased out of the political imagination after Modi’s 2014 victory. Political speculation along such lines tends invariably to be salacious and these, in turn, gnaw away at the moral integrity of a govt. The Modi govt has so far made its mark on the strength of its achievements in governance and on the development front. People’s perception has been shaped by its energy and record of delivery. Modi hasn’t been distracted by the political shenanigans that prime ministers from P V Narasimha Rao to Manmohan Singh had to expend their energies on. It is in his own interest to ensure that the fears of ‘coalition adharma’ turn out to be false scares.India, it would seem, has unexpectedly been confronted by two different approaches to politics. Quite unwittingly, Rahul Gandhi detected the conflicting impulses in his first speech as Leader of Opposition. In welcoming the Speaker, he said: “Speaker sir, the question is not how efficiently the House is run, the question is how much of India’s voice is allowed to be heard in this House. Speaker sir, so the idea that you can run the House efficiently by silencing the voice of the Opposition is a non-democratic idea.”While wilfully overstating and mocking the disciplinarian compulsions of a Speaker, he astutely identified a unique facet of the Modi govt: its use of efficiency as the yardstick of good governance and politics. From directing govt employees to attend office punctually, using technology to stop the proverbial transmission losses of government funds, to holding periodic audits of ministerial and departmental performance, Modi’s political priorities are implicitly non-discursive. He seems to loathe yesterday’s meandering pravachans.This is in marked contrast to the political imagination of the INDIA combination that (at least for the moment) wants elaborate parliamentary deliberations to set the tone of politics. There is a view of liberalism that celebrates decision-making which flows from the laboured aggregation of conflicting philosophies — a confederal system where even the views of CPI (ML-Liberation) and AIMIM are given disproportionate weightage. This approach is at best akin to taking the scenic route or, more likely, travelling by the mail train that stops at every station. What matters is the journey, never the destination.Maybe there are countries where non-urgency and plebiscitary democracy are ideals. But does it suit the imperatives of an India where the real challenge is to bring all parts of a vast and diverse country into the 21st century, without losing our sense of who we are? It is shaping up to be a battle between the cacophony of liberal democracy and the choral chants of national democracy.