Such is the mad rush, as shown to
us by the poverty discourse once again, Gujarat
and Modi being in the centre this time.
In spite of all the claims,
Gujarat is in India
and cannot be free of the typical Indian problems of the day – corruption, social
discrimination, poverty and so on.
Yes, the scale varies and Gujarat can claim having lesser degrees of these evils
and Narendra Modi can rightly claim his governance being a reason behind somewhat
improved levels. But it will be daydreaming to claim that peace and prosperity
have become synonymous with Gujarat. That
cannot be, not even in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, in the prevailing social and
political circumstances of India.
So, even in Modi’s Gujarat, there are always the chances of slipping,
getting flipped on the side, to the weaker domain, to give your adversaries the
needed arsenal to lash you as severely as possible.
And when it is the high-time of
the Lok Sabha elections, every such attack gets magnified multifold. And so is
the counter-response that is more in the form of counter-attack.
So, this time, it is about the
poverty discourse that has come to the surface after a December 2013 circular
by the Gujarat government on its website made its way to the newsrooms. The
circular is for the Antyodaya Anna Yojna that provides subsidized foodgrain to
the BPL (Below the Poverty Line) families. The circular caps The Poverty Line
for the eligible families at Rs. 10.8 a day, much below the Planning Commission’s
Poverty Lines of Rs. 32 a day for urban areas and Rs. 28 a day for rural areas.
As it had to happen, in the
election time, it was a big issue, for Congress, and for the other parties
opposing the BJP, and thus, for the BJP.
And in the election time haste, the
Congress strategists went full throttle to take advantage of it, ignoring or
suppressing the fact that this Rs. 10.8 a day cap was decided by the Planning
Commission in 2004 and not by the state government.
Who cares for the finer details when
the issue on surface and its proximity to the target make for the headlines?
And therefore, the mad rush was
there and was fully blown, until the finer details emerged.
Congress and other anti-BJP
parties immediately ratcheted up the debate by targeting BJP and Modi of insulting
the poor while reminding the nation how the BJP and Modi made an issue of the
Planning Commission’s Poverty Line figures.
Modi government and the BJP
immediately came up with the rebuttal trying to put the Congress in dock by making
Planning Commission’s guidelines a front of their defense.
Rounds of defense and attack
continued as long as the newsrooms saw ‘rating returns’.
It didn’t matter if the ‘Aam
Aadmi’ was interested in tasting this ‘old wine in a repackaged old bottle’ or
not as long as the issue presented the political parties a prospect to lure the
‘Aam Aadmi’ votes without doing much.