There is only one way to describe the foreign media coverage of the Covid-19 crisis in India—it stinks. It stinks of bias, superiority complex, voyeurism and even racism. It also stinks of lazy journalism, ignorance, and worse, of distortion. As if callous intrusion into the last rites of Indians was not enough by blowing up photographs of burning pyres on front pages of western legacy media, now there are television reporters of international channels marching into ICUs of Indian hospitals with their cameras, feeding off the misery of patients like scavengers, apart from putting lives in danger. Such actions stem from the western sense of superiority, while taking pity and pot-shots at the crisis in a “third world” country. It appears like a barely concealed glee at how they have managed the pandemic better, although the whole world has seen how difficult it has been for the West to bring back even a semblance of normalcy when the first wave of the virus hit them. How their “first world” healthcare system collapsed facing a once-in-a-century onslaught. But no TV camera barged into hospitals violating the patients’ privacy. The coverage was restrained. But since Indian funerals are often in the open and thus easier to photograph using drones, there is this plethora of insensitive images giving the impression of apocalyptic devastation—of hellfire burning—even though on an average the US was facing over 5,000 deaths a day during the height of the crisis, perhaps as much as India’s or worse. This inability, nay, unwillingness to understand a culture that is different has been the hallmark of the Western world, and the media too is reflecting that in a much magnified manner.

Also the current crisis is a validation of their belief that a “poor” country like India does not deserve a place on the global high table. This is reflected in almost every report that is done about India, be it about its space program or its industry, everything comes with a caveat—“and this even though it’s a dirt-poor country which is divided along caste lines”. For them India could be a banana republic, and it’s a miracle that it has not yet broken up into pieces.

Of course, the question is how much of this reportage stems from bias and how much of it is “inspired” by interests inimical to India, or maybe it is a combination of both. It definitely helps certain countries if they can show India as unfit to receive large-scale foreign investments, or become a key alternative to China as a manufacturing base. In fact, reports suggest that the Chinese media is deriving vicarious pleasure from India’s current troubles and what is happening in the western media space is an amplification of that narrative as well. Moreover, serious questions need to be asked to the western media about their reticence to call China out for the monster it has unleashed on the world. Why describing Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” is considered racist, but not calling out the “Indian strain” or the “South African strain”? Why does Western legacy media refuse to probe what exactly China did in Wuhan, why is there unwillingness to question WHO for the way it kowtows to China? Why is it that Indian Prime Minister can be hauled over coal by the western media, but not the Chinese President? From the coverage that the Indian Prime Minister gets, it’s almost as if he is a tyrannical despot, and not a leader democratically elected by hundreds of millions of voters—a Prime Minister who is accountable to his people. Legitimate criticism is a must as else course correction does not happen, but in this case the targeting reeks of political bias—a one-sided rant often devoid of facts. How did Xi Jinping escape such a scrutiny even after unleashing the virus on the world? Is there more to it than meets the eye? India is wondering.

I hardly know a family that has not had Covid-19. There is hardly an extended family that has not witnessed death or suffered from its after-effects or due to the unavailability of critical medical care. It is the severity and reach of the disease that makes it a pandemic.

But there is another side to this which is positive and not being reported because death is big news and recovery is not. More than 85 percent of people recover without hospitalization and it is only the 5 percent or so which needs critical hospital care. While I have heard news of the deaths of friends and associates, I have also heard news about entire families recovering very fast.

But the larger debate in the country is not about recovery or death: it is about who should be blamed for the pandemic. Very few are talking about China and the possibility that the virus has been unleashed to weaken India. A pertinent question to ask would be why countries similarly or worse placed such as Pakistan and Bangladesh have not reported the same severity. Have people there become very disciplined or has the health infrastructure there become better than India? This is something inexplicable.

When we are too emotional, particularly when we are deep in sorrow, our critical faculty refuses to work. We try to apportion the blame for death. Was it our inability to get a hospital bed or oxygen cylinder that led to death? Who is responsible for this? Surely the chief ministers, who are caretakers of health infrastructure in their respective states, can’t be responsible. They have done a splendid job by crying and trying to do politics and express their helplessness. A chief minister even said that he can’t reach every person and it was the responsibility of the residents of the state to save the state. No one found it objectionable.

People cried for oxygen and the chief ministers cried too, trying to blame the Union Government. There surely must be one person who is not allowing them to work for the welfare of people. To them it is the failure of the Central Government to provide oxygen to the states. However, when asked to explain why different states have performed differently, they have no answer.

So, the blame must lie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Why is he not crying in a country where talking is taken as acting, where bravado is seen as a sign of leadership? His critics are attacking with vengeance and creating optics that the pandemic has happened due to him and due to his inability to tackle the situation. Why did he address election rallies? Why did he allow the Kumbh Mela? Why did he not impose a nationwide lockdown like last time? Most attacks hover around these issues. Let us try to understand what the Prime Minister has been doing when the chief ministers were crying and doing politics.

Here is a prime minister who tries to work silently when a crisis comes and does not react to political statements since this is not the time to take the bull by the horns. He focuses on channelising his energy into finding solutions and works with double speed. If he also becomes a crybaby like the others, who will come up with a solution? I would not have defended him since the person who is the best speaker in the country does not need a minion like me to defend him. But I am angry. Angry that we seem to be losing our critical faculty. Facts and logic work no more.

Modi’s critics have been trying to systematically destroy him by painting a negative image. But he has come out with flying colours every time. This is because he believes in the philosophy of nishkaam karm (selfless work) and stithpragya (to stay steadfast in every situation)—the two ideals suggested by Lord Krishna in The Bhagwad Gita for a karmyogi. But we must ponder, are we doing the right thing by targeting a man without even a shade of civility? Society should not become so ungrateful. We should not crucify our saviour every time. We should learn from mistakes.

This pandemic has exposed the failure of our health infrastructure to give it an adequate response. First, nobody in the world had expected that the second wave would be so pervasive. Everyone thought this would be less severe. Can we blame Modi for this? The Supreme Court while asking the government to pull up its socks on fixing the oxygen supply also gave a tongue-in-cheek statement that should not be missed. The observation came on 30 April 2021. The Court held, “… the healthcare infrastructure inherited over the past 70 years was not sufficient and the situation was grim.” Can we blame the Prime Minister for this? In fact, he has brought the best healthcare facilities within the reach of the poor by enabling them to get best treatment under the Ayushmaan Bharat scheme. Till the time we have super-speciality hospitals in every district, let people not suffer.

We should not forget that till Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Prime Minister, there was only one AIIMS that had been set up in 1952. It was Vajpayee who decided to open six AIIMS, one each in the states that did not have good medical facilities such as Madhya Pradesh (in Bhopal), Odisha (Bhubaneshwar), Rajasthan (Jodhpur), Bihar (Patna), Chhattisgarh (Raipur) and Uttarakhand (Rishikesh). Learning from Vajpayee, Dr Manomohan Singh as Prime Minister opened one AIIMS in Uttar Pradesh at Rae Bareli in 2013. When Narendra Modi came to power he decided to open 14 AIIMS to cover the entire country. Every state should have a centre of medical excellence so that they don’t have to rush to Delhi. His vision has been that the problems of a country of India’s size needs addressal on a big scale and a piecemeal approach would not work.

The Modi government has decided to open 157 medical colleges across the country, something that was never thought of. And the government is not withdrawing from the health sector. The number of government medical colleges would be more than those in the private sector. There were 215 private medical colleges and 189 government colleges in 2014-15. In 2019 there were 279 government colleges and 260 private colleges. The vision is to have at least one super-speciality hospital in every district.

Have we ever thought that there is a huge shortage of MBBS graduates and specialists in this country? There were only 50,000 medical seats in the country till 2014. In the last six years, 30,000 additional seats have been added, besides 24,000 postgraduate seats to promote specialization and excellence. A question needs to be asked here: why was this not thought of earlier?

The doctor-population ratio in India is 1:1456 against the WHO recommendation of 1:1000. This is just a statistical average. The situation is abysmal in some states. Bihar has one doctor for 28,392 people, followed by Uttar Pradesh (19,962), Jharkhand (18,518) and others. Even the national capital has one doctor for 2203 people, which is almost double the number in the WHO norms. According to a study by the Medical Council of India, Jharkhand would take 87 years at the present rate to reach the WHO norm.

People would say it is not a big deal. That is the reason he was brought as the Prime Minister. One can’t disagree with this. Now let us look at the short-term measures taken for or immediate response given to the pandemic. During the first wave of Covid-19, the Prime Minister imposed a nationwide lockdown since he knew that the country was not prepared to face the crisis. His strategy paid off even as our economy slid to an unimaginable point. But the time was used to ramp up medical infrastructure and the pandemic was contained. His decision was criticised by many states that said it was unconstitutional and the states should have been given the liberty to devise their own strategies, that the Centre should limit itself to sending advisories or sharing knowledge, and that since the pandemic had differing extents and severity in different states, they should have had strategy that suited them.

So, when the country had enough PPE kits, sanitizers, gloves, masks and inoculated medical and paramedical staff, the states could be trusted with taking care of the crisis. Many leaders had opined that a national lockdown was not the right solution when most states had opted to go for their own versions of lockdowns.

On four occasions, the Union Government sent missives to the states saying that the second wave was coming and they needed to follow Covid protocol strictly. The Centre had written a letter to four states—Maharashtra, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal—in January 2021, asking them to take precautions and warning them about impending danger. On 21 February, the Centre wrote again, asking them to increase the number of Rapid Antigen tests and RT-PCR tests and impose strict and comprehensive surveillance. At that time, more than 74 percent cases were from Kerala and Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had also witnessed a spike. On 25 February, the Cabinet Secretary had a review meeting with seven states that had witnessed a spike—Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh. On 27 February, the Cabinet Secretary had a review meeting with Telangana, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, and West Bengal. These states were advised not to lower their guards, enforce Covid-appropriate behaviour and also deal firmly with violations. Many such meetings took place, showing that the Centre was aware and that it kept asking states to prepare themselves. The Prime Minister held 28 meetings in April-May on how to deal with Covid-19.

The Central Government also told the Supreme Court on 30 April that it had been urging states to prepare for a second wave of Covid-19. The states, however, had not updated their data even after constant persuasion. It stated in an affidavit that it had asked states to prepare a district-wise estimate of beds and capacities in Covid care facilities, based on the trends of infection growth. Had the states followed the projection tool created by the Central Government and ramped up medical infrastructure, the situation would have been different, the Centre said.

On the supply of medical oxygen, the Centre said that of the total requirement of 8462 MT, 22 high-burdened states were already allocated 8410 MT. Also, the Centre was augmenting oxygen on a war footing such as it had already floated a short-term global tender on 16 April for the import of 50,000 MT of medical oxygen. Besides these, 551 PSA oxygen plans are being set up at district hospitals. This is apart from the 500 PSA plants being set up by the DRDO to augment oxygen availability. The signal-free Railway Oxygen Express is also running to ensure the supply of oxygen to needy states. The PM CARES fund has also been used to purchase 1 lakh portable oxygen concentrators and set up Covid hospitals in states, besides spurring the vaccination drive. The Prime Minister has reviewed the progress of converting nitrogen plants to oxygen plants and the process is underway in 14 industries. Further, 37 nitrogen plants have been also identified for conversion this way.

The Centre has also airlifted oxygen tankers from Germany, the UAE, Singapore and other countries using the Indian Air Force to meet the demand for cryogenic tankers for the supply of oxygen. As a part of Operation Samudra Setu II, seven Indian Naval ships—Kolkata, Kochi, Talwar, Tabar, Trikand, Jalashwa and Airavat—have been deployed for the shipment of liquid medical oxygen-filled cryogenic containers and associated medical equipment from various countries. The Army has opened its hospitals to civilians and paramilitary forces are running Covid care centres in various states. The Railways have provided 70,000 Covid care beds across the country and opened Railways hospitals for non-Railways patients. Leading industrialists have also diverted their industrial oxygen for medical needs.

The Prime Minister is the one who stressed the need to vaccinate people. Target groups were identified and allocation made for the vaccination drive. But our leaders politicised the vaccine as well, calling it a “BJP vaccine”. It appeared that they were playing at the behest of forces keen to weaken India. Crucial time was lost. A lot of politics was played regarding the price of the vaccines as if the government was making money out of it. The crucial factor is the reach of the vaccine and not the pricing. While the poor need to be given it for free, those who can afford it must pay to lessen the burden on the exchequer. Hopefully, now the states would go for faster vaccination. Those who can afford can take it from private hospitals as well.

Some critics also made a lot of fuss when India was supplying vaccines to the world for their critical needs such as the vaccination of their healthcare workers. This was not being done at the cost of citizens but as per protocol. India’s efforts have been appreciated the world over. Now that India is in need, the entire world is trying to help us. It is not without reason that French President Emmanuel Macron said that India does not need to listen to lectures from people on vaccine availability. India has helped many countries in making vaccines available and thus helped humanity. Prime Minister Modi’s appeal to countries of the European Union that the TRIPS waiver be given for vaccinating the entire globe without thinking of earning profits has been taken positively.

Enhancing vaccine production capabilities and giving vaccines to all in India and also the world has been the country’s priority. The Prime Minister is working for that. The government has already ordered 160 million doses of vaccine that would take care of things till July. The Centre has allowed states to procure vaccines directly from private players too. Since the Centre has decided to give the vaccine free to target groups and people above 45 years, 50 percent of the vaccines would go to the Centre and 50 per cent to states or private players. Subject to import licensing and approval by regulatory authority, private players can import vaccines. These importers can supply vaccines to states or private players. Sputnik V is going to be the first vaccine available in the private market. Dr Reddy’s Laboratory is already raring to go.

Why did the Prime Minister participate in elections? He could have said no. Is this a fair proposition? The Election Commission conducts elections and the Union Government provides the means and resources to conduct elections including paramilitary forces. When the Election Commission was reportedly toying with the idea of postponing elections in Bihar, every party had opposed and wanted immediate elections. That had also taken place when Covid was surging. The same was the norm this time. Nobody had problems with other parties or their leaders campaigning but critics had problems with the Prime Minister. You don’t create a different norm for the PM. And he did cancel his meetings towards the last legs of campaigning in West Bengal. BJP leaders including Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah cancelled all their election visits to the poll-bound state of West Bengal.

Why was Kumbh Mela allowed to take place in Haridwar? This could have been cancelled. It was for the state government to decide whether it was feasible to organise such a large mela and yet follow the Covid protocol. The Union Health Secretary had written to the Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand on 21 March expressing concerns on the Kumbh Mela. The Union had warned the state about a surge in cases as people from affected states would also reach the mela. The state was also told that the daily testing numbers reported in Haridwar (i.e., 50,000 Rapid Antigen tests and 5,000 RT-PCR tests) were not enough and they must be increased as per ICMR guidelines. Strict quarantine and treatment were suggested for affected people. The state government had already shortened the Kumbh Mela from a four-month event to just one month (January-April to just April) in view of the adverse situation. But the decision proved to be a bad one. The Prime Minister did appeal to people and seers to make the mela symbolic.

Because of space constraints, I have focused largely on what the Prime Minister has done and how unfair we have been to his efforts. In the next, if needed, I would write how various chief ministers have failed their respective states.

The writer is convener of the Media Relations Department of the BJP and represents the party as a spokesperson on TV debates. He has authored the book ‘Narendra Modi: The Game Changer’. The views expressed are personal.

The affinity of public sector entities including governmental departments, nodal agencies and regulators for print advertisements is unmatchable. It is probably part of an ancient SOP which is yet to be updated.

The ad category that catches the eye the most is the one for the recruitment of people and empanelment of agencies. The print media industry must be thankful for such a customer segment, but this is the age of ads on online platforms like LinkedIn and others, even for hiring non-tech roles and senior positions. It is probably a sheer waste of paper, money and time when public entity advertisers take their SOPs too seriously and publish print ads calling for professionals to work with digital tools and technology! That’s using ink to promote digital!

One wonders whether these ads mean to showcase that the entity did indeed advertise as part of a process and to tick something off a list or if it really seeks to bring in the servicemen or knowledge providers that the ads call for. Assuming that the target audience for the advertisements actually reads those newspapers, one should take a look at the size and location of the ads and more importantly the “stern” messaging of them that actually replicate official documents with many reference numbers and bureaucratic lingo. But it is in these semantics that the optics often lie hidden!

And it doesn’t end there. The tardiness in asking “those interested” to visit the recruiting department’s website is worse than searching for a needle in the haystack. You can even search for the needle using a high powered magnet, but try searching for the said advertisement on those websites! (On a lighter note, one also wonders if even the individuals mentioned as the “undersigned” in those ads can locate the specific ads in their maze of a website.) I am sure most of us have seen QR codes which can be published in a print ad and take the user directly to the specific section on the advertiser’s website upon scanning them, which can be done using any of the many affordable camera-phones used in India today.

It is indeed time for public offices to assess the effectiveness of their advertising and to ensure that the outcomes are measured to showcase the cost of effective reach. That would be a way to account for such public spending.

It is also time to correct anomalies in the way public offices advertise and redraw the rulebook to stay relevant in the 21st century, but without reducing or missing out on any stakeholder’s access to complete information.

Universities have made unparalleled contributions in bringing different civilizations together and nurturing them towards social and scientific advancements. University of Bologna which was founded in Italy in the year 1088 is considered to be the oldest university in continuous operation. It is believed that by the end of the 15th century there were about fifty universities, and all were in Europe. All modern universities of the world have evolved on the pattern of the 11th century European model of universities. According to an estimate, there are about 25,000 universities in the world. India is known to have the largest system of higher education in terms of the number of institutions, with 982 degree awarding institutions and about 40,000 colleges.

The western system of higher education has substantially influenced the system of the rest of the world, primarily because of its futuristic orientation and significant research contribution in frontier areas of knowledge. They have brought out critical understanding of social dynamics and invented modern technology which has permeated in all dimensions of human development. One unique feature of western universities is that they are continually moving ahead of time. There are universities which have a common practice of establishing curriculum and research groups that invest a considerable amount of time on a continual basis in planning and designing of futuristic curricula and determining research priorities for the present as well as for the unknown boundaries of the future. These are some of the unique characteristics, among others, that make them the leading universities of the world. These universities have been role models for a long time for most parts of the world. A large number of them have been continually capturing ace positions in global rankings that are carried out by different agencies. That has started mounting enormous pressure on universities in other parts of the world.

Ranking system in higher education is not a recent phenomenon. It has been there right from early times, but in different forms. It is said that even after the establishment of the University of Oxford in 1096, Londoners preferred to go for higher studies to other places of Europe, and that continued until the imposition of a formal embargo by the king. This perception-based ranking remained part of the system until the mid-eighties when American universities started domestic rankings based on limited parameters. It was followed by some other countries in different forms where it began in the form of program accreditation and institutional accreditation. This trend ultimately took the shape of global ranking of universities. Soon, the ranking system caught the imagination of some commercial organisations which saw great potential in it. They evolved their own instruments in consultation with experts and launched a global ranking exercise in the beginning of the 21st century which eventually gave rise to competition amongst universities as also among nation states. Soon, it generated a newer kind of enthusiasm amongst some countries which started aspiring for ‘world-class’ universities.

On the concept of the ‘world-class’ university, Phillip Altbach in 2004 said, “Every country wants a world-class university. No country feels it can do without one. The problem is that no one knows what a world-class university is, and no one has figured out how to get one. Everyone, however, refers to the concept.” Since then, the debate on world-class universities is on but no one has been able to articulate yet what it really means. A very big conference on world-class universities was held as late as October 2019 at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University where no one agreed on any one definition of the ‘world-class university’.

A world-class university is perceived to be a multidimensional concept. The most significant aspect of a world-class university lies in its capacity to lead the world through its academic rigour in frontier domains of knowledge besides churning out the most talented workforce needed by the modern world. People have been aspiring to have world-class universities for a long time. There is a famous anecdote about the University of Chicago. It is said that when John D. Rockefeller wanted to establish the University of Chicago in 1890, he contacted the then President of Harvard University, Charles William Eliot, and asked him as to what is required to build a great university? Eliot replied that it required USD 50 million and 200 years. On hearing that, Rockefeller said that he got the message loud and clear but he would not wait for that long, for he would like to invest much more than USD 50 million and establish a great university much earlier than usual.

Since it is difficult to turn a blind eye to the idea of having world-class universities in a highly competitive world, even less resilient economies came up with numerous innovative ideas to have world-class universities. India also realized the need to have a couple of world-class universities. The National Development Council (NDC), in its meeting held in November 2010, approved the setting up of as many as 14 world-class universities in the cities of Bhubaneswar, Kochi, Amritsar, Greater Noida, Patna, Guwahati, Kolkata, Bhopal, Gandhinagar, Coimbatore, Mysore, Pune, Visakhapatnam and Jaipur.

The idea was to have a two pronged approach to set up a few world-class universities. While some of them could be established under the de-novo category focusing on issues of national importance, others could be identified from amongst the existing universities and provided additional resources for attaining world-class standards. These universities would provide teaching and research facilities of the standard comparable to the best universities of the world and they would be under the category of institutions of national importance like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Later on it was decided to change the nomenclature from world-class university to Universities for Research and Innovation. And accordingly a Bill was introduced in the Parliament on May 21, 2012, which somehow could not be passed.

Five years later, the government decided not to take the legislative route and instead opted to do it through the UGC (Institutions of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2017. Hence the government constituted an Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) and entrusted it with the mandate of identifying ten public and ten private institutions of higher learning based on their academic standings that could be granted the status of Institution of Eminence (IoE). Ten public institutions that were shortlisted by the EEC are IISc, Bangalore, four IITs—Delhi, Bombay, Madras and Kharagpur—BHU, Universities of Delhi, Hyderabad, Jadavpur and Anna. The ten private institutions are MAHE-Manipal, BITS-Pilani, O P Jindal, Shiv Nadar, KIIT-Bhubaneswar, VIT-Vellore, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapitham, Jamia Hamdard, Satya Bharti Foundation and JIO Institute. Up till now only among the public institutions and four from the private ones have signed MoUs with the government. It looks like a work in progress but at a very slow pace despite claims to the contrary.

There are different dimensions towards establishing world-class universities. While some of them are related to frameworks, others are related to quality, governance and sustainability. One can understand the necessity of having world-class universities in the country because none of our universities is ranked among the top hundred in global rankings. Another reason could be that India’s innovation in higher education has generally side-stepped universities either in preference to premier institutions or to establishing new institutions. We also need world-class universities because most of our institutions are churning out graduates without skills required in the real world.

But establishing new universities especially those intended to be innovative require careful planning and understanding of the weakness of the current system. If we aspire to have universities with world-class standards then we have to consciously avoid the weakness of the current system like overwhelming bureaucratic burden, degree of severity of the toughness of decision making, little incentive to innovate, eliminating fragmentation of knowledge, freeing the universities from external control, substantial resources, etc. In addition, they have to have futuristic orientation in every aspect of their operation. It hardly needs any mention that they will have to provide an inspiring learning and living environment to their students.

Since such universities are expensive institutions, they require liberal grants over a protracted period of time and freedom to mobilize resources from other sources in a transparent manner. Enabling some of our existing universities to emerge as world-class centres of academic excellence, as envisaged under the scheme of Institutions of Eminence, can be most successfully achieved over a period of time provided honesty in honouring the commitments takes precedence over everything else from both the sides.

The author is former Chairman, UGC. The views expressed are personal.

Intense speculation over the possibility of either a major reshuffle in the Punjab Cabinet or re-allocation of portfolios to ministers has begun following the widespread meetings that Captain Amarinder Singh has been having with party MLAs.

In fact, this could be the first step to prepare the Congress for next year’s assembly polls and the exercise may be held either simultaneously or prior to the High Command’s efforts to reorganise the organizational set up. The PCC had been dissolved some time ago and no decision has yet been taken on who shall be replacing the State Chief, Sunil Jakhar, who too has been continuing in the caretaker capacity. The central leadership of the party had been keen to appoint Navjot Singh Sidhu in place of Jakhar but this appears to be most unlikely with the Captain now coming out openly against the former cricketer.

Although Amarinder has always extended all courtesies to the High Command, it appears that he may go in for the reshuffling operation to both assert his authority as well as to send a clear signal to New Delhi, that he should be given a free hand to run the affairs of the government in order to win next year’s polls. Unable to get his nominee, Manish Tewari, named as the PCC Chief, the Captain wants the High Command to also play a role in selecting the organization Head. With Harish Rawat, general secretary, in-charge of the Congress in the state still recovering from Covid-19, the Chief Minister may not settle for anyone who may be at variance with his thinking. A seasoned politician, he realizes the importance of the party president, especially during ticket distribution, and thus wants someone who is compatible with him to hold that position. On its part, the High Command would still make a last minute bid for Sidhu and by withdrawing his name at the last moment to gain leaverage, may opt for a nominee, who“ is equidistant’’ from the Captain.

Nervous MLAs have been presenting their views to Central leaders even as none of them has the courage to openly challenge the Chief Minister in Chandigarh. Their concern is largely regarding certain policy measures that have been announced recently. Punjab’s financial condition is dismal and any step that would be a burden on the diminishing finances would have to be viewed through a pragmatic prism. The announcement regarding the implementation of the pay commission would certainly, on the face of it, endear the government to its employees. However, if the money remains unpaid, the matter could boomerang.

The Congress party in the state has to also address the sacrilege issue which would be a factor in the assembly polls. Rajya Sabha MP Pratap Singh Bajwa has, in a letter to the Chief Minister, asked him, why no meeting of state MPs to discuss the burning political matter had been called. He has also appealed to him to arrange the meeting at the earliest and ensure that those connected with the probe as well as the DGP police were also present. Political activity in the state is warming up. It is now for the High Command and the Chief Minister to tread the path carefully to maintain complete harmony within the party and the government.

A lot has been written about the BJP not being able to dismantle and prevent the Trinamool from romping home to victory in the recently conducted West Bengal assembly polls. First things first, going from 3 seats in 2016 to 77 seats in 2021 is a massive achievement, translating into an over 2400% rise in seat share. Don’t forget that the TMC was set up in 1998 and has no impact or presence outside Bengal whatsoever. Despite focussing only on Bengal, it took Mamata Banerjee 14 long years to dislodge an inept and corrupt CPI(M) from power in Bengal, before Trinamool struck gold in 2011. In the 2001 Bengal assembly elections, TMC won 60 seats. In 2006, that number halved to 30 seats. In 2011, the TMC won 184 seats, and in 2016, 211 seats. In 2021, the TMC’s tally was 213 seats. Jaded, hapless and largely irrelevant journalists like Pritish Nandy, for instance, who have been frothing in excitement at how Bengal managed to stave off the BJP juggernaut, fail to realise that what the BJP has achieved in just the last five years is incredible and exceptional. From a vote share of just 10.2% in 2016 to 38.1% in 2021 is not a mean achievement. The Lutyens’ cabal, driven by its visceral hatred for Narendra Modi, has always applauded Mamata Banerjee for managing to uproot Red terror from Bengal in a short span of 14 years, but is not willing to credit the Shah-Nadda duo for becoming the principal challengers to the TMC in a matter of just five years! Is that not rabid hypocrisy?

The BJP has made the Bengal electoral scenario from a four-party to a two-party affair. The BJP has also completely demolished the Congress and the Left to an embarrassing zero seats in the just concluded assembly polls. That most of the Congress-Left votes were transferred to the TMC this time is a different matter altogether that needs introspection. But to the BJP’s credit, it is the largest party in the world today, because it celebrates its victories but more importantly it learns from its defeats, dusts off the inadequacies, brainstorms, thinks hard, works harder and eventually wins the war! That Amit Shah and J.P. Nadda put in an incredible amount of effort, toiling day and night, is something that makes the BJP the disciplined, organisationally strong party that it has turned out to be, where not only is winning important, but playing by the rules is even more important.

The moot question then is: what about the “Modi factor”? The charisma, respect, ground-connect with the electorate, popularity and indomitable capacity for relentless hard work are all factors that make Prime Minister Narendra Modi a leader who is in a league of his own. PM Modi, the tallest leader in post-Independence India, has no competition. To even try and create a false equivalence between the indefatigable Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee, a fascist, rabble rouser, limited to Bengal, is doing a great disservice to even the basic understanding of Indian polity.

The Congress has ceased to matter after a string of debilitating defeats, with Rahul Gandhi turning into a vacuous paper tiger on Twitter whom no one takes seriously. The Left, barring in Kerala, has been wiped out. Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav never had any national stature to start with and both their parties were almost reduced to nothingness in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in 2017, with SP winning only 47 seats, compared to the massive 312 that the BJP won. Even in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, while the BJP secured 62 seats in UP, Congress was reduced to 1 seat, Samajwadi Party merely 5 seats and Mayawati’s BSP to 10 seats. The “Khan Market Gang” has tried to resurrect the political fortunes of many failed regional satraps in a bid to checkmate the Modi aura, but these efforts repeatedly came to nought.

The recent efforts to portray West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as a challenger to PM Modi in 2024 is therefore both laughable and ridiculous. Outside Bengal, Mamata has no impact or credibility. At the Ramlila Ground in 2014, where Anna Hazare was supposed to speak but did not turn up, Mamata Banerjee had held the fort for Hazare by filling in for him, but no one turned up to hear her. She was greeted with an empty ground with rows and rows of empty chairs. Also, to be a national-level leader, a certain amount of empathy and compassion is a must and Mamata Banerjee, unfortunately, has neither. Mamata is the same lady who had mocked the rape of Suzette Jordan in Kolkata in 2012, saying that Jordan was a disco-going, alcohol-loving, club-hopping, partygoer, who probably deserved the ignominy of rape. Yes, womenfolk have been voting for Mamata in good numbers, despite her pathetic record in stalling crimes against women in Bengal. To that, let people be reminded that Rome was not built in a day. Womenfolk voted even this time for Mamata, more out of a fear of retribution, rather than any admiration for her brand of politics. The grim truth is that in the last ten years, the track record of Mamata’s governance has been shoddy: no new industries have come up in Bengal in the last decade, Central government schemes were stalled by Didi, driven by her hubris, and Hindus have been systematically marginalised at the expense of the Rohingyas and illegal migrants who have wreaked havoc in the state in terms of festering rampant lawlessness.

There are those who ask, if lawlessness prevailed in Bengal, why did womenfolk vote for her in 2021? To that, the simple answer is, “voter inertia”. The Sainbari massacre happened in 1970, followed by the ghastly Marichjhapi massacre in 1979. The brutal murder of Ananda Margi monks at Bijon Setu near Ballygunge in 1982 was followed by the heinous Nandigram massacre in 2007. Yet, CPI(M) ruled Bengal with an iron fist for 34 long years. From being invincible in 2001 to being reduced to zero seats in 2021, the Left has been completely routed. Hence, those who use Mamata’s 2021 victory to sideline her gross incompetence as a failed leader would do well to know that the TMC’s decline has started, and rather rapidly. It will take the BJP far less time to dislodge the TMC than it took the TMC to dislodge the Left.

The Left parties and the Congress have failed to win a single seat in the 2021 Bengal polls. This will be the first time since 1962 that the Left parties will have no representation in the legislative assembly. The CPI(M) registered an all-time low vote share of 4.73%. The other major partners of the Left alliance like the All India Forward Bloc registered 0.53 % votes and the CPI 0.20% votes. The Congress registered an all-time voting percentage of 2.93% in Bengal and lost its political clout over Malda and Murshidabad districts. In effect, the Congress is not a national party of any standing anymore.

The fact that the BJP in 2021 has made huge in-roads into a non-Hindi-speaking, non-Western, non-Central Indian state like West Bengal speaks volumes about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invincibility and credibility. Don’t forget, the BJP won Tripura in 2018 after 25 years of inept, Leftist misrule. The BJP increased its vote share in Assam in the 2021 polls from 29.5% to 31.5% with a thumping majority, for the second time in a row. The BJP raised its tally from zero to four in Tamil Nadu and from zero to six in Puducherry. In Puducherry, the BJP’s vote share went up from 2.4% to 11% while the Congress saw a decline in its vote share from 50% to a measly 6.7%. While the local leadership in Assam played a pivotal role, the fact remains that it is the overarching and indefatigable “Modi factor” that should be given credit for the spate of electoral successes that the BJP/NDA has witnessed in the last seven years, over and over again.

Bengal has, over the decades, always held on to the status quo before a complete electoral shift. The CPI(M) was in power for 34 long years before Trinamool took over and the first time Trinamool tasted the scent of an impending victory, it managed only 60 seats. In sharp contrast, this time around, the BJP looking to displace the TMC did far better, with 77 seats. True, the BJP had set a target of 200 seats. But does that give out-of-work political pundits the right to mock the BJP? In the Bihar elections in 2020, the BJP upped its tally from 53 to 73 seats and got just two seats lower than the RJD. Tejashwi Yadav was stonewalled and despite a 15-year-old anti incumbency, the NDA, led by the “Modi factor”, won! Even in the DDC polls held last year in Kashmir, the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 75 seats, checkmating the combined bunch of six parties aka the “Gupkar Alliance”. In the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections, the BJP raised its tally by 1100% from 4 to 48 seats, while the TRS came hurtling down from 99 to 55 seats. In the Gujarat local body polls a few months back, after winning 483 of the 576 seats, the BJP, boasting of a success rate of 84%, trounced the Congress, which had a measly strike rate of just 9.5%. The very media which fails to give credit to the solid 77 seats won by the BJP in Bengal was pontificating at the 27 seats won by the AAP in the Surat local body polls, despite the fact that the AAP lost deposits in Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar and Ahmedabad. The BJP-led NDA, under the fantastic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has had a string of noteworthy successes, despite a highly critical media that has exacting standards for the BJP, but handles the Opposition with kid gloves. The talk of “Godi Media” is plain hogwash.

While the media has been writing reams and reams about the BJP’s performance in the Ayodhya and Varanasi panchayat polls, there has been stoic silence about the fact that the BJP won the hitherto impregnable Pandharpur seat, Rajsamand in Rajasthan and Belagavi in Karnataka in the recent bypolls. Last year, the BJP audaciously snatched away the Dubbaka seat in Telangana, an erstwhile TRS bastion. And it is precisely this audacity of ambition that pushes the BJP to do the unthinkable and achieve the unimaginable. As they say, if you aim for the summit, you get halfway there. Next time, the BJP would be well on its way to scaling the summit and winning Bengal, with no ifs and buts whatsoever.

Some allege that Mamata’s vast and regular cash transfers to the Dalits and OBCs swung the votes in her favour, while others say that the turncoats who entered the BJP from the TMC played spoilsport for the BJP. Yet there are others who believe that the insider versus outsider narrative propped up by Mamata worked to her advantage. With the Muslim percentage in West Bengal more than double the national average, the Muslim vote was always going to be a huge advantage for the Trinamool if the community consolidated behind it. And by corollary, this would be a huge disadvantage for the BJP.

In 2021, the Trinamool painted itself as a nativist force,saying the BJP was a party of bohiragotos (outsiders). “Joy Bangla” overtaking “Jai Shri Ram”, “Bengali Nationalism” superseding “Hindu Nationalism” and Hindu votes getting splintered were the other reasons advanced by political pundits for Mamata’s victory. The elections are done and dusted. The key question now that begs a response is, is Mamata Banerjee worthy of taking on a larger national role? Is Didi capable of becoming a fulcrum around which the disparate Opposition unites for 2024? The answer to both these questions is a vehement “No”!

Mamata Banerjee is absolutely unfit and unworthy of a larger national-level role. She has peaked out. 2021 was her best performance ever, which she will not be able to repeat. Her loss in Nandigram to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari signifies the many chinks in her armour. Even in 2016, Mamata’s victory margin in Bhawanipore had come down from over 60,000 votes to barely 25,000 votes. Mamata’s personal credibility amidst charges of massive corruption against her nephew have dented her immeasurably and going forward, the TMC could even split into two. While turncoats who came into the BJP may not have won this time, the exodus from the TMC shows that all is not well within the party and, for all her false bravado, Mamata has been unable to contain internal fissures.

Also, Mamata has a wildly maverick, fascist side to her. Rather than accepting her Nandigram defeat gracefully, she trained her guns on the Election Commission (EC), blaming it for the debacle. How can a leader who has scant regard for the EC, the apex court, the judiciary and the armed forces, be entrusted with a responsible role beyond Bengal? So consumed was Didi by her desire to win that she did not even spare the CRPF and CISF, who were repeatedly targeted by TMC goons. What a pity that those who talk about FoE and lecture Prime Minister Modi on the sanctity of democratic institutions have not once blamed Mamata Banerjee for the untold misery and mayhem that she has been a mute spectator to, even as TMC vandals unleashed a macabre chain of arson, loot, gangrapes, political killings and brutalisation of BJP karyakartas and supporters, largely Hindus, post the TMC victory. A large-scale exodus of Hindus (over 80,000) from Arambagh, Durgapur, Sitalkuchi, Karimpur, Bishnupur, Bolpur, Hooghly and Midnapore to Assam is a deliberate and mala fide attempt by Mamata and her goons to delegitimise the 2.28 crore voters, also largely Hindus, who voted for the BJP.

The national media which raised a stink over Hathras has completely avoided coverage of the horrific Hindu exodus from Bengal, which started with the exodus of Hindus from Raniganj in 2018 during the Asansol riots. How can Mamata Banerjee, who refuses to take action against large-scale communal violence, be even considered by the so-called secularati for a serious national role? Mamata Banerjee is a puny leader and her barbaric justification of political killings of those from the right wing ideology do her no good. Even as Bengal burnt, Mamata and her party, the TMC, rather than assuaging the victims of the Bengal violence, kept suggesting that the gruesome mayhem was a figment of the BJP’s imagination. The likes of a forgotten for good and irrelevant Yashwant Sinha and the out-of-work clubhouse chatterati played along with Didi. Yes, Mamata won the Bengal elections, but she lost her credibility, just as she lost that wheelchair magically the moment election results were announced!

She launched a personal attack at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah after a CBI team questioned her nephew’s wife in connection with a coal pilferage case. At a rally at Hooghly’s Dunlop Ground, Mamata took potshots at the duo without naming them.

“I don’t want to malign the post of the Prime Minister. But two men from Delhi are visiting Bengal and spreading misleading words. One is hodol-kutkut and the other is kimbhut-kimakar,” said Didi. “Two persons are running the country. One is Ravan and another is a danav (monster),” she added. Those who accuse Prime Minister Modi of leading a misogynist campaign against Mamata have completely missed the point. “Didi o Didi” is neither an abuse nor a catcall. ‘Didi’ is merely a colloquial term for fondly and respectfully addressing someone as “sister”.

I am a woman myself and I say this with complete responsibility that, if anything, it is Mamata Banerjee who needs to be castigated for repeatedly abusing the office of the Prime Minister in the most unworthy language and then having the nerve to play the victim. Modi has been viciously abused by Mamata and her goons but national and international media has conveniently chosen to be quiet. Why? Does being a woman give Mamata Banerjee the carte blanche to abuse the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of the largest democracy in the world repeatedly and then pretend to be sanctimonious under the garb of gender neutrality?

Last but not the least, the BJP has 77 MLAs and 18 MPs in West Bengal today, from virtually nothing a few years back. The growth trajectory of the BJP, thanks to the “Modi factor”, has been phenomenal and will only get better going forward. For Mamata Banerjee, the writing on the wall is clear. It is time for her to get her act together and behave like a Chief Minister and not a rabble rouser who gives in to bouts of bogey victimhood and criminal lethargy when dealing with lawlessness. And for all those who say that Mamata did not act against arsonists and marauders during the Bengal exodus due to the prevalence of the Model Code of Conduct need to know that the EC only oversees conduct of free and fair elections. The law and order and administrative machinery continue to be with the incumbent/outgoing CM till the new CM takes over. Since both the outgoing and incoming CM was Mamata in this case, she needs to take complete ownership of over 80,000 Hindus who were forced to flee Bengal in a gruesome reminder of why she can never aspire for a significant national role. The Bengal exodus will prove to be Mamata’s final nemesis politically, and rightfully so.