Modi has failed the electorate, damaged institutions like CBI: Manmohan Singh

As the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reels under it’s worst credibility crisis, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday, October 26, strongly criticised his successor Narendra Modi for vitiating the environment in national institutions like the CBI and the country’s universities.

In a stinging speech, Singh accused PM Narendra Modi of failing the electorate and eroding voters' faith by maintaining silence on incidents of communal violence, lynching and cow vigilantism in the country. “He (Modi) has spoken of being a prime minister for all Indians but the government he presides over has mostly been silent in the face of widespread communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism,” Singh maintained.

He was speaking at the release of a book 'The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India' written by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.

“At the same time, academic freedoms are being sought to be curbed. The environment in our universities and national institutions like the CBI is being vitiated and dissent stifled,” Singh further said.

He said Modi did not represent the secular, plural, free and equal society that India's founding fathers had envisioned.

“In 2014, Narendra Modi was elected 14th Prime Minister of India on the back of many lofty promises he made to the people of India. In the past four years, Modiji and his government have failed the electorate and eroded their voters’ faith,” he said

“Narendra Modi is a ‘paradoxical prime minister’ and Tharoor has demonstrated this through his superbly written and devastatingly accurate book,” he said, in a sharp take down of PM Modi.

Coming to the economic issues, Singh asserted that nothing concrete has been done to bring back billions of dollars allegedly stashed abroad as black money.

Singh alleged that, “PM Modi is presiding over a fearful population, an economy that has been set back by foolhardy initiatives, painful lack of jobs, the growing distress among India’s farming communities, a devastating number of farmer suicides, insecure borders, instability in Kashmir, and the palpable failure in implementation of even laudable initiatives like Swachch Bharat, Skill Development, Make in India and Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao.”

“This is what he presides over, and not a secular, plural, free and equal society that was... envisioned and built in its six and a half decades as a free nation,” he added.

Modi’s rule has “not been good” for India and it all arises from the Modi paradox that Tharoor has shown in his book, he emphasised.

“Much of what the Modi government is all about has turned out to be little more than a series of empty gestures...with very little substance having been achieved on the ground,” he remarked.

Lauding Tharoor for writing a “timely” book, Singh concluded that “the idea of India is under threat today from those who seek not just to rule India but change it’s very heart and soul.”