Editorial

The script of the much-trumpeted ‘Gujarat Model’ is getting curiouser and curiouser, and the twists in its trajectory since the beginning of 2023 have been nothing short of sensational. 

Having narrowly retained power in Tripura, the Modi government has launched an all-out offensive against the opposition by using the lethal combination of street power, propaganda and state power that has become the hallmark of this fascist regime. After relatively peaceful elections in Tripura, the Sangh brigade has unleashed a renewed reign of post-poll terror, vendetta and violence in the state, targeting opposition parties, their voters and even the fact-finding team of Left and Congress MPs and MLAs who were on a visit to the terror-stricken state.

Even as the Modi government was grappling with the impact of the two-part BBC documentary on the Modi Question, Modi’s closest corporate ally Gautam Adani found himself in the eye of the Hindenburg hurricane. On 24 January while the world eagerly awaited the second episode of the BBC documentary, the US-based Hindenburg Research came out with its report titled Adani Group: How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling The Largest Con In Corporate History.

On 17 January, the BBC aired the first episode of a two-part documentary called ‘India: The Modi Question’ which focused on Modi’s role as the then Chief Minister of Gujarat when Gujarat witnessed a horrific pogrom in the wake of the Godhra train fire. The film was not aired in India and the Modi government promptly asked Twitter to take down tweets and links about the video and YouTube to stop uploads of the video or its clips.

‘Survival of the Richest’ is the title of the Oxfam Global Inequality Report 2022 released on January 16, 2023. The report, coinciding with the annual global jamboree of the rich and the powerful in the World Economic Forum, gives us a revealing picture of the growing income and wealth inequality, inequality that grew alarmingly during the pandemic and is reinforced constantly by the regressive taxation pattern in the neoliberal era where the poor are taxed heavily while the rich get away with paying very little taxes.

Joshimath, the last city on the borders of Uttarakhand is fighting for its existence. New cracks are emerging each day in roads and buildings across the city, making the place totally unsafe and possibly unlivable. A callous administration that has refused to pay attention to every wake-up call and alarming signs all these years is now desperately marking houses and hotels that need to be vacated immediately.

The arrival of a new year is generally a time for setting new goals and making new resolutions. For the Modi government this of course means dumping of old promises and the launch of a new narrative with new goalposts.

Three years since the deadly outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic, the world is yet to emerge from its disruptive aftermath. Incidentally, more than anywhere else it is China, where the pandemic originated, which continues to experience aftershocks of the viral outbreak and even witnessed widespread social protests against the coercive state interventions in the name of controlling the pandemic.

Recent past has witnessed a concerted attack by the Modi government on the Supreme Court. Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijuju have taken turns to publicly berate the collegium system of appointment of judges with the Vice President also castigating the Supreme Court for striking down the National Judicial Appointment Commission (NJAC) Act in 2015, calling the judgment as being in disregard of the “mandate of the people”.

The results of the Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and the municipal elections in Delhi have been on predictable lines, except the scale of the BJP’s Gujarat victory which surely merits a close scrutiny. The BJP was the party in power in all the three elections, and it has now lost power in two of them. In this sense, the BJP is a net loser, but the loss clearly lies overshadowed by the scale of its victory in Gujarat in terms of both vote share (above 52 percent) and seat share (above 85 percent).