Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | Gen Z Needs To Regroup, Pick Issues That Matter

It is clear to everyone around that the fight over the special intensive revision (SIR) carried out by the Election Commission under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is not going to be a T-20 contest. It is going to be a long-drawn-out one.

There is little doubt that the SIR was not carried out fairly. It is a legal issue, and it would need hundreds and thousands of people to step forward to make their complaints over the arbitrary way the state election commissions have carried out the exercise.

The Supreme Court can only judge the issues concerning SIR based on specific instances. There need not be many examples. a single instance of violation of a rule or procedure is sufficient to hold SIR to be null and void.

There is enough room to assume that CEC Kumar is not above suspicion of acting improperly. The court can suggest revisions and give directions for remedial measures. That will still leave Mr Kumar the choice to complete his term in the face of protests. So the objections to SIR and nailing Mr Kumar’s responsibility can only go so far and no further. Armed with a possible negative view of the Supreme Court over SIR, the Opposition can initiate the impeachment process against the CEC.

If the Opposition manages to establish the wrongdoings in the execution of SIR, it will be both a political and a legal victory. In the political arena, moral victories do not matter much. It is also clear that the Opposition’s main target is not Mr Kumar but Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his chief collaborator in the decision-making process, Union home minister Amit Shah. Even if Mr Kumar is nailed for his legal faux pas, Mr Modi and Mr Shah can shrug their shoulders and remain cynical bystanders. It is hard to imagine that either the Prime Minister or the Union Home minister will take moral responsibility for the illegalities found in the implementation of SIR.

So those who have filed the case against SIR will have to be content with tactical victories. This will be a crucial political gain no doubt. But as in the case of Neet and the resignation of then Union education minister Dharmender Pradhan, the Modi government will divert attention by talking about the economy though it is not doing too well in real terms.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman appears acutely aware of these economic challenges. She has been speaking in sombre tones about the rupee’s declining value against the dollar and rightly attributing it to external factors. And unlike Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal, who has been unduly optimistic and even exuberant, she referred to India-United States trade talks in guarded tones. She remarked that both sides have reached a plateau in the talks, and neither side has any scope for yielding ground.

The sale of majority stake of the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) is not the gleeful development that innocent people in and outside the government are making it out to be. It is not a trophy for that illusive and elusive thing called economic reforms. Instead of creating public sector banking giants, as China has done, India has opted to bring in a foreign partner.

It makes sense if India’s private banks were to create partnerships with global private banks. For the government to seek a foreign partner for a bank is a declaration of failure. So the economy is facing tough challenges. The comfort zone for the Modi government is shrinking.

Neither Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam chief Chandrababu Naidu nor former Bihar chief minister, Rajya Sabha member and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar are inclined to demand their pound of flesh from Mr Modi’s BJP which is in a minority and which they are propping up. The large-scale defection from the Lok Sabha contingent of the All India Trinamul Congress (AITMC) is still up in the air.

The not-so-happy situation in which the Modi government finds itself seems to be a natural consequence of a government that has been in power for 12 years, and it is running out of ideas and programmes that can impress people. There is a sense of fatigue both in the government and the people. Even Mr Modi who is forever high on optimism, is subdued. It does not mean that the government is at the end of its tether. There is enough to do even to keep things as they are.

The Opposition has reasons to be cheerful. The government is literally with its back to the wall. But it might have to widen its agenda. The individual issues like the leakage of Neet examination papers or the foul play in the SIR are effective protest issues, but they may not sustain. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and Leftist student organisations like the All-India Students Association (AISA) have played a stellar role in putting an arrogant government in the dock. But it may not be sustained over a long stretch.

Even as the BJP hopes the unfriendly gale would blow over, the idealistic protesters who have breathed new life into the dead polity may have to think of looking at other burning issues, and there are plenty of them. The two major issues they can choose are the environment and climate change. Prime Minister Modi is piously loud about solar energy, but brazenly silent about the environment. This can be seen in his reckless development projects in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The political parties in the Opposition will not take them up because they hurt the economic interests of the mainstream players in industry and business. It is the young protesters of CJP and AISA who can bring these issues to the fore.

Climate change is wrecking the lives of ordinary people. An unrelenting rise in summer temperatures and devastating rainfall in some areas with ruinous drought in others are spreading an architecture of destruction affecting hundreds of millions of vulnerable people. The young political warriors can really reset the national agenda around issues that matter.

The BJP leaders are waiting for the young protesters to go home after exhausting themselves. It would be great if the youth can outwit the self-satisfied politicians in and out of power. India and the world are in need of idealistic politics.

The writer is a Delhi-based commentator and analyst