Murthy B S
Twitter – @murthybs
Human history is all about stories of people who outlived & outlasted despite the worst of the conditions & situations. Nation is defined & guided by character & quality of their founding fathers vision & beliefs. Attempts by few individuals to alter the ethos of a country rarely wins & we are in the middle of one such determined effort to crush the spirit & plurality of India. Today’s India is all about headline management which has become a successful industry vertical . The intensity with which the very idea & foundation of this nation is challenged in the last 6 years had not happened since 1947. It is happening not by debates or arguments but through character assassination & slander.
PM Modi & Amit shah has made Indian power play book into a very personal space , it has nothing to do with ideals or manifestos of their party, today PM & HM run the nation by their whims & fancies with no regard to norms & rule of law. They believe every individual can be fixed , bought or intimidated as they hold all cards of power. No wonder the entire parade of erstwhile anti BJP parties support BJP today openly or covertly . Examples are TRS, AIADMK, MIM , BSP, SP & host of smaller parties are nothing but partners & employees on speed dial of Home minister amit shah.
The theatre of Indian politics changed big time since 2014 , Political parties , political leaders , media managers were made to realize that they are regular people & as Adam smith , The Father of Economics said “people respond to incentives” better than respond to threats. Thus kicked off the biggest incentive program Indian political landscape had ever known of. Hundreds of media entities and TV channels have been enlisted & offered fiscal incentives to air slander & character assassination of Rahul Gandhi on weekly basis .Ably supported by BJP IT Cell, BJP is the only political party in the world who has full time IT & Social Media cell with hundreds of paid people to do this dirty work. The actual money spent would run into few thousand crores & could make a interesting case study for PR consulting organizations globally, a university or one of the big 4 to research this thoroughly. I am sure they will come out with startling revelations hitherto never seen or heard , guaranteed.
The only leader with a national appeal who has not towed the line is Rahul Gandhi , highly vocal against the RSS & the government. PM & HM believe it would be in their long term interest to finish him politically through character assassination , slander & libel , thereby building a national perception that there is no alternative to the duo , means that there will be no visible challenge for PM & HM in the decade to come . This is a carefully scripted operation , in which every credible media is used to build negative picture of Gandhi family .The campaign has been on for 6 years now. It has been an extraordinary 6 years of Goebbels propaganda warfare against the Gandhi family by PM & HM . It is magic of Indian voter’s confidence in INC that has ensured the relevance of the party.
The sheer quantum of resources deployed to discredit one man viz Rahul Gandhi has never been done in the history of independent India as they know that he is the last man standing in their way . I don’t recall ever if anyone else has been on the receiving end of this intensity of slander ,defame & libel using hundreds of TV channels, scores of print media & millions of whatsapp groups & virtually the entire social media space ever !!. Rahul Gandhi & Gandhi family character assassination is a whole industry now & comes with excellent incentives & careers built for a whole generation of people in media , print & political spectrum. We don’t see this phenomenon anywhere else in the world what we see in India now against Rahul Gandhi. Character assassination equals emotional violence against the individual & what he stands for , now the country’s narrative & debates have been reduced to attacking Rahul Gandhi.
What you insist , persists
BJP’s relentless campaign against Rahul Gandhi has also ensured a huge organic support base building for the party across the spectrum of the society. The more BJP slanders Rahul Gandhi , he will persist more , to the benefit of congress. Slowly , the country’s political landscape is moving towards the binary scenario , PM Modi & Rahul Gandhi , with every other political party’s influence limited to its state & national ambitions of all of them withering away , the nations alternative face is now undoubtfully Rahul Gandhi. As we move ahead in the next 2-3 years , the entire narrative will be around these 2 leaders only ,benefitting INC hugely. If the economic annihilation continues for 2 more years, these regional parties will be forced to align with Rahul Gandhi to counter the BJP challenge.
India definitely needs Rahul Gandhi to realign the political narrative away from BJP & RSS’s bigotry , communal & hate politics . Mr Gandhi has shown extraordinary patience & character during these testing times . He has been at the forefront of finding solutions for the pandemic management & has been giving his timely insights to the government. Today the country ‘s foundation is being dissembled one stone at a time & the only national party now in opposition is congress. It is a matter of time people will see the truth.