The UP election has changed the rules and landscape of Indian politics forever. The major factors responsible for bringing this transformation are mainly two :-
1. Economic Re-Engineering through Demonetization
2. Social Re-Engineering of Caste & Religious political alignment
Demonetization in Nov’2016 was ridiculed by anti Modi economic experts, intellectuals, journalists and politicians as a “human & economic disaster” brought on the nation by a Prime Minister without elitist education tags and even as “despotic” by the likes of Amartya Sen. These rootless arm chair critics awaited first for a common men’s revolt during those 50 days and when that didn’t happen - prayed, predicated, instigated and even manufactured the story of a voters revolt in the various elections following the demonetization period. But the very opposite has happened. Modi wave seemed to have taken the shape of a “TsuNamo” following demonetization and swept the corrupt & criminal opposition parties in the local body and assembly elections alonwith those journalists, economic experts & intellectuals. If a wind is blowing from Karnataka to Maharashtra to Gujarat to Rajasthan to Haryana into Odisha & NE, can UP – the laboratory of re-engineering of Indian politics be untouched? Since the time of India’s independence, every political party, intellectual and expert has always retorted that corruption & black money are the main causes of the economic backwardness & misery of majority of poor, underprivileged Indian. Yet, nothing was done till Modi came less than 3 years ago to break the shackles of corruption driven by black money in our country. So much so that Indira Gandhi nationalized banks in the name of poor in 1969 but the poor had to wait till Narendra Modi became the prime Minister for the banks to open their doors to them. it is only a Modi who after 47 years of bank nationalization, took steps to open bank accounts for the majority of poor common men. Demonetization has further shown to the common men of the nation that only the privileged class & beneficiaries of crony capitalism, who were directly affected by demonetization have made a hue & cry by protesting/opposing it without much substance, while the under privileged, honest & hard working class - who were merely inconvenienced have chosen to be resilient for long term greater good of this nation. These self-serving politicians and experts have failed to capture the moral and structural dimension of the demonetization. It was the first ever move to capture the moral high ground by taking on the dishonest class of the society in a way that no other self-certified socialist or communist so called pro-poor leaders or party could do or even imagined earlier. It has strengthened Modi’s charisma and image that he is incorrupt and incorruptible. And that he won’t compromise with corruption even at the cost of his political career. This has enhanced Modi’s personal stature and made BJP acceptable to the large cross section of underprivileged voters. The poor have finally found in Modi a decisive and strong leader, who is determined to do something for their hopes and aspirations. Hence, his statement during UP campaign that “Hardwork matters more than Harvard”, had hit the right cord with not only the less privileged class in UP but across the nation.
Poverty doesn’t discriminate between caste or religion. For far too long, manipulative politicians backed by their boot licker historians, intellectuals and media had hidden the truth about poverty behind a curtain of distorted ancient or newly manufactured caste & religious divide. They prospered by exploiting the economic insecurity and misery of common men for their own benefit. The so called “Socialist leaders” like Mayabati, Mulayam, Lalu etc. have made good governance a laughing stock by their exploits. The established theory was that the hindu votes will always be divided between various class and upper & lower castes. Hence, the winning formula specially after the “Mandal experiment” was to break them into more sub castes by flogging the either ancient or now manufactured stories of exploitation by the upper castes, even play the so called upper castes like Brahmins, Thakurs and Baniyas against each other and appease one minority community to manipulate democracy in India. BJP is working relentlessly to erase this age old and mostly artificially manufactured caste and occupational divides. Urbanization, migration, spread of education/information and breakdown of earlier caste based occupations also have helped made the earlier caste & community distinctions irrelevant. After NDA Govt led by Modi came to power at the centre, in UP - some 52 lakh women have got Ujjwala gas, Rs 20,000 crore loan has been given through Mudra bank, the Rs 2 lakh life insurance has created more than one crore beneficiaries among the poor & backward class, some 3 crore Jan Dhan accounts have been opened, 1,464 villages got electricity connections first time after 68 years of independence, 11,000 new toilets were constructed under a central government scheme. And all these happened without discriminating between any caste or religion. Unlike SP, in whose rule only the Yadavs among OBCs or in Mayabati’s rule, when only Jatavs among Dalits - mostly benefited economically & politically and became so powerful that they became a class by themselves – NDAs benefits encompassed all castes including non Yadav OBCs and non Jatav Dalits as well as economically weaker upper castes. Even Muslims, saw that LPG or Mudra loans or Jan Dhan accounts or toilets or electricity were as available to them as anybody else on the basis of poverty and not faith. They realized the myth created & circulated about Narandra Modi since 2002 were lies designed for electoral benefits. The common men of India, today see in Modi a political leader hailing from a poor backward caste family who has remained personally poor, has no greedy relatives exploiting his position and is serious about uplifting the poor & backward through education, health and economic reforms and change the social, political economic culture of this nation to change its image in the world. It slowly began to sink on the large under privileged voters that Modi believes in delivery rather than false rhetoric/promise as is the case with most other top politicians from other political parties. Modi’s message that election & political power are not about caste, religion or region but about elimination of poverty and all round progressive development though good governance in the entire country without any discrimination – Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikash - has slowly started began to sink into the conscience of the common men of this nation. This has brought various class, caste and religious groups closer to each other leading to a social re-engineering.
It is this Re-Engineering of Economic Class, Caste and Religious barriers - created over last 60+ years by the so called “fake Secular-Socialist” political parties in collaboration with a section of paid media, intellectuals & activists, just to confine power, policy & discourse making privilege within themselves by twisting, falsifying and distorting India’s history, economy, sociology and politics - is generating an undercurrent with the new age conscious voters of this nation as evident from the various elections from Panchayat to Assembly since 2014. The UP election verdict is surely just the beginning of a “New India”, finally emerging breaking the shackles of the several century old colonial culture and its agents.
Those who have 'illusion' that 2014 was the “Peak of Modi Wave” are terribly wrong. It was just the “Beginning of Modi Era”.
