I thought the Hindu Right, had finally changed its spots. I was understandably naive as RSS activists are ultimately running the PMO instead of technocrats. The branding communications win of the Modi Campaign infused the country with a ‘modern’ Nation Building spirit with the ‘Achche Din’ or ‘Better Days shall come’ electoral ethos.  BJP has had a series of electoral home runs from Srinagar to Ranchi. Excellent, in a way as the Secularism with systemic graft model of the Congress sunk big time. The country needed more jobs to be created as policy paralysis had been in place since many many months before the 2014 polls.  Development is the central totem of neo-liberal development and usually the Religious Right fuse Identity Politics with the rhetoric of  infrastructure development. Chicago School Economics is the preferred school of economic thought for leaders of the BJP such as the venerable Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha . Jayant Sinha, a Harvard trained  former Mc Kinsey Consultant turned Politician is in the Finance Ministry with a Hindu Right Wing Ideologue Nitin Gadkari incharge of the infrastructure portfolios. The recent conversion conversation with the objective of polarization for votes is taking the BJP back on the Ram Mandir Movement pathway (read 2016 UP polls), and this will make the hot air of  good governance fizzle out.

Ghar Vapsi or reconversions back to the parent Hindu fold with the lure of money is a petty campaign of the Hindu Right to deflect attention from the pressing concerns of the tribals, minorities and the disenfranchised. A few thousand  minority brethren forcibly reconverted to the  Hindu Fold or calling December 25 as so called ‘Good Governance Day’ will not deter Christians in following ones Faith. The Staines Murder in Baripada, Odisha had shaken the collective conscious of the nation as the Gujarat progrom. The Assam, Dhule and Muzaffarnagar episodes do not auger well for  ‘Swachch Bharat’ or Clean India when some politicians are responsible for riots.

‘The Make In India’ Campaign is glitzy and creative as the ‘India Shining’ campaign (the death knell for the BJP in 2004 in fact), but has no relevance for the farmer suicides afflicted families in Vidarbha. Acchche Din does not mean dilute Environmental and Social Laws without taking in to account the marginalized or saffronize the Education System by trampling rational thought.

We need Inclusive thought, a balance somewhere between the Rabid Right and Extreme Leftist thinking as place for religion is vital but within the four walls of the home.  The separation of the Mandir and the Mantralaya is sacred although our public sector functions start with the lighting of the lamp. Is this the ‘Achche Din’ that you had offered Mr. Modi?