SP Singh’s Daleel takes you through the is­sues that are dom­i­nat­ing the In­dian Gen­eral Elec­tions sce­nario. More than seven decades af­ter In­de­pen­dence, In­dia has woken up to the glo­ries of na­tion­al­ism, an is­sue that seems to have de­fined the 2019 Elec­tion Cam­paign. Any­one with an op­pos­ing view is be­ing called anti-na­tional. We are sud­denly talk­ing about the acute need to keep the coun­try se­cure.

The ref­eree for these elec­tions, the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, is it­self fac­ing ques­tions of cred­i­bil­ity. We dis­cuss all of these, and more, in­clud­ing Pak­istan, Kash­mir, and even Nu­clear Bomb! On the Daleel panel of this episode, you in­ter­act with Dr Pramod Ku­mar, Di­rec­tor, In­sti­tute of De­vel­op­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (IDC), Chandi­garh and Mr Ramesh Vinayak, Ed­i­tor, Hin­dus­tan Times, Chandi­garh.

They en­gage with the ques­tion about why na­tion­al­ism has come to top the nar­ra­tive in these elec­tions, and why have some slo­gans gone miss­ing? What­ever hap­pened to the nar­ra­tive about Skill In­dia, Dig­i­tal In­dia, Make in In­dia and a whole lot of other such phrases that were bandied about in the last five years.

The pan­el­lists ask if Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the BJP are get­ting pan­icky, and what could have prompted care­less ref­er­ences to In­di­a’s nu­clear weapons? The pan­el­lists also dwell upon the state of the in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, cur­rently fac­ing ques­tions of cred­i­bil­ity.

The pan­el­lists were asked why we have landed in a sit­u­a­tion where Pak­istan is be­ing pro­jected as a huge is­sue when we had con­structed a very dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive with great ef­fort, pro­ject­ing In­dia as a ma­jor power with a throb­bing democ­racy, an ad­van­tage of young de­mo­graphic, ma­jor IT power, im­pres­sive GDP growth while hav­ing strong armed forces. We wanted to be taken se­ri­ously and be­haved as a re­spon­si­ble nu­clear power, but now fling-around atom bomb threats so ca­su­ally.