(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha)Obama made world-renowned his election slogan, "Yes, we can". With a hundred days yet to go for our own elections, we must learn to say, "No, we won't" to the Modi challenge.
Let us begin by remembering that at exactly this time ten years ago, everyone assumed that the NDA would have a walk-over. Indeed, that is the only reason the BJP Prime Minister brought forward by six months, from October to May, the Lok Sabha elections of that year.
I remember a solitary article by Yogendra Yadav (then an intellectual of repute, now a pall-bearer of the Aam Admi Party) speculating in a really thoughtful, closely-argued article in a leading national newspaper that the outcome of that election was not yet a closed chapter. That, indeed, turned out to be the case. Soberly assessing the Party's own electoral prospects, the Congress stitched up a series of alliances in the run-up to 2004 and emerged triumphant. I felt so sorry for Atal Behari Vajpayee that after taking my oath as a minister, I walked up to him in Parliament and humbly touched his feet. There were not a few on our benches who reproached me for that gesture but I have not regretted it for Vajpayee was a good man and I felt the least one could do was offer an expression of human sympathy for one whose hopes had so suddenly crashed to the ground.
Modi, however, is not a good man. He is going to receive not a drop of the milk of human kindness from me when his hopes are equally dashed come the merry, merry month of May.
The pre-poll survey results that are flooding TV channels are all serving to indicate to all concerned what they need to do to turn the apparent outcome on its head, even as happened in 2004, indeed even as happened in 2009 when UPA-II bested its own record as UPA-I.
That would be at two levels - the tactical and the strategic. At the tactical level, the DMK would be seeing the stark prediction that its strength in Parliament might be reduced to a mere five, while its principal opponent's soars to perhaps the highest among the "Third Force" parties if it does not shed its present reluctance to join hands with others who are at least as interested in dampening the Puratchi Thalaivi's ambitions as they themselves are.
Equally, a divided house in UP has opened several doors for the BJP. Those doors could start getting shut if like-minded parties were to start getting together. The same holds for Bihar. Closing ranks in those two states could dramatically alter current predictions. The lesson is different but similar for the NCP and the Congress in Maharashtra.
On the other side, the resistance to seeing Modi toppling their own hopes is also a lesson that those, such as the Left Front, who want to see a secular government emerge are bound to learn and absorb. Thus, tactically speaking, the assumption on which the current surveys are based - that the present line-up is the final line-up - could well be changed in state after state.
But more than the tactical is the strategic offensive that all those who do not want to see a Modi-led government must take. "No, we can't" must change to "No, we mustn't" to point to the dangers that lie ahead if things do not change over the next hundred days.
Ours is a democracy based on consensus, not an authoritarianism bent to serve one man's whims. Good governance is not the same as over-ruling all law, all alternative considerations, riding rough-shod over contrary opinions and bullying the bureaucracy into violating not only rules and procedures but also all ethical imperatives. Whether it was the post-Godhra pogrom, the so-called "encounters", the stalking of a young woman, there are a myriad other instances to show that what Modi calls strong governance is in reality one man's rule based on retribution for respecting the law instead of that one man's imperiousness.
The cry comes loud from the jails where the victims of those who listed to Modi's illegal orders are lodged. Instances of this in his 12 years in Gujarat are numerous and must be documented and propagated so that the people know what he has been up to before deciding that they do not want that in their lives.
The merciless exploitation of Gujarat's tribals must also be highlighted. The Twelfth Plan document officially proclaims that 76 per cent - the highest in the land - of those displaced by the Gujarat model are desperately poor tribals, mercilessly exploited to make way for Modi's friends, the Wolves of Dalal Street and Nariman Point.
The obscene subsidies extended to Big Business must reach to the knowledge of every home. The highly respected Economic and Political Weekly has calculated that every Nano built in Gujarat has a subsidy from the Government and people of the state amounting to Rs. 60,000 per car; that land acquired by the Gujarat government in Kutch and sold to a single private party at one rupee per unit has substantially been resold at 1500 times that price; that small enterprises have been allotted land in a Special Industrialization Zone at up to 700 times the value of the land allotted in the same SIZ virtually free to a giant engineering enterprise.
It also needs to be bruited about that Gujarat's growth rate under Modi has been lower than even under Chimanbhai Patel, that agricultural growth is only the result of the operationalisation of the Sardar Sarovar dam built by the Centre after the World Bank withdrew its funding; that many states, beginning with neighbouring Maharashtra and extending all the way to distant Bihar and Tamil Nadu have returned far better results than Gujarat; and that Gujarat's human development ranking is a pathetic 15 in comparison with other India states.
Violations of human rights, beginning with 2002 and extending down the years till today, need to be rubbed into the Indian psyche to forestall the tragic mistake the German electorate made in January 1933. The fundamental values of our modern nationhood - the widening and deepening of our democracy; secularism as the bonding adhesive of our peoples; the forging of unity out of the celebration of diversity; non-discrimination; the pursuit not of the domination of any individual or but the upliftment of the weakest; priority to the poor over the privileging of the rich - all these are in danger.
We shall overcome because everything Modi stands for is in opposition to the civilizational idea of India. We have been far too polite to Modi. We must show him up now for what he is.
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