In New India, everyone but the Prime Minister is responsible for disasters

One really has to admire supporters of the current Narendra Modi-Amit Shah led mega-majority BJP government at the Centre (plus sundry allies). And I’m not even talking about the tired “Jawaharlal Nehru is to blame for the current pollution in Delhi because he didn’t foresee it in 1963” excuse.

No, we have new and innovative ideas which come up every day to defend the dear prime minister, his dearly beloved home minister and all the rest of our slightly less-beloved worthies “in charge”.

The bureaucrat excuse:

This is a real humdinger! For five years, from 2014 to 2019, fans of Modi and/or the BJP informed us that Modi had great and fantastic ideas to fix all India’s problems, but it was evil bureaucrats who stymied him. They did not appreciate his true genius, or they were lazy and good-for-nothing, or they were stooges of the last government.

As five years of the first term came to an end and most bureaucrats in senior positions had been changed, co-opted, rules changed to allow bureaucrats to jump into government post-retirement or resignation without a cool-off period, bureaucrats now became the wizards of change. I am not even mentioning the disaster that is the Niti Ayog. Shhh.

The old argument was conveniently flipped after the 2019 general elections. The Modi government Part II was going to soar ahead because fabulous bureaucrats were in charge. Hence the great joy when Dr S Jaishankar hopped from IFS to a Cabinet minister to the BJP. Indian foreign relations would never be better, now in good hands, they told us. Ah well.

The less said about the publicity machine which attempts to hide the misery in Kashmir the better. And then there’s the wilful and somewhat, er, badly implemented, is it fair to say, “internationalisation” of the Kashmir issue with the visit of members of the European Parliament paid for by some shady “NGO”. About which the External Affairs Minister (former brilliant bureaucrat) apparently knew nothing because this show was run by the bureaucrats in the Prime Minister’s Office and the National Security Agency. Ah, well.

The Lack of Talent excuse:

For five years we were told that the poor BJP, in spite of the brilliance of Modi, didn’t have enough people to take over important portfolios and thus allow Modi’s brilliance to shine. Defence kept jumping from minister to minister. The scuttlebutts told us that the late Sushma Swaraj had to be kept on even though she wasn’t in the Modi camp because there was no one else. That the late Arun Jaitley didn’t really know finance, but Modi trusted him and who else did they have et cetera. No one however actually either proved that Modi himself was brilliant or capable.

Now in the new 2019 government, there was more talent was the great hope. Sadly, Sitharaman has made a mess of the finance ministry and who knows what the other ministers do. Modi travels about across the world, Amit Shah makes incendiary remarks about minorities and the RSS plots and plans more doom for minorities and non-RSS people. Business as usual, then.

If Only We Had an Opposition

This is my personal favourite. Everything that happens in the country is the fault of the Opposition. Not the people who made the mistakes, not the ministers who make the decisions. But the opposition parties, either individually or collectively. If this Opposition had been stronger, better, richer, cannier, then the BJP would not be in power to mess India up.

This excuse is acceptable when it comes to supporters of various Opposition parties. But when it comes from people who voted BJP or from those who find it painful to hold the current government responsible for what it does, then it is downright funny and also, well, evil.

Modi, the panacea for all ills, was voted into power by someone. Now that he’s failed in almost every category of governance and succeeded only in increasing hatred and inter-community hatred, the Opposition is responsible.

We must of course never mention that when the Opposition has done better than the BJP in an election, the BJP has used muscle, money and legal and illegal trickery to form a government anyway.

Please note that I never said all this.

That’s going to be my excuse!