With the hype cre­ated around In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mod­i’s ad­dress to the na­tion, cit­i­zens were an­tic­i­pat­ing de­ci­sive an­nounce­ments on the covid19 pro­gramme and the flareup at Indo-Chi­nese and Indo-Nepalese bor­ders. Ev­i­dently, the hype was built only to be­lie. Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Ku­mar San­jay Singh sifts the chaff from the grain to hardly find any grain.

INDIAN PRIME MIN­IS­TER NAREN­DRA MOD­I’S ad­dress to the na­tion was more of an ex­er­cise to con­trol me­dia head­line than to ad­dress the two most se­ri­ous threats to the se­cu­rity of the na­tion and the lives of its cit­i­zens. Ex­ten­sion of re­lief mea­sures al­ready an­nounced by the fi­nance min­is­ter; shift­ing the onus of en­sur­ing com­pli­ance of SOP’s re­lated to covid19 on the pub­lic, and a deaf­en­ing si­lence on China; was the sum­mum bonum of the speech.

One can­not but won­der at the sin­gle-minded pur­suit of power by the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal dis­pen­sa­tion. Even in the face of med­ical and po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments that have the po­ten­tial to im­peril the coun­try, elec­tion­eer­ing seems to un­der­pin every move of this gov­ern­ment.

Covid19 pan­demic has been re­peat­edly uti­lized as a barom­e­ter to test the pop­u­lar­ity of the In­dian Prime Min­is­ter — the prime vote catcher of his po­lit­i­cal party. As well as, to sur­rep­ti­tiously im­ple­ment the eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal agenda of the BJP. From or­ga­niz­ing pub­lic events for Trump, Op­er­a­tion Ka­mal in Mad­hya Pradesh; crush­ing of anti-CAA protests; amend­ment of com­pany law; to the pro­mul­ga­tion of new labour law — the list is too long to be fully re­counted here.

Re­gret­tably, to­day’s ad­dress to the na­tion fol­lows this oft-re­peated strat­egy. The hype around the ad­dress was in­tended to dis­place COVID-19 and the cri­sis on In­di­a’s na­tional fron­tiers from prime time news, and it was also in­tended to in­flu­ence the forth­com­ing as­sem­bly elec­tions in Bi­har.

De­lib­er­ate and cal­cu­lated ref­er­ence to chat puja, the most pop­u­lar mass fes­ti­val of Bi­har, while an­nounc­ing the ex­ten­sion till No­vem­ber 2020 of free ra­tion to the poor; the Hon’ble PM did not only use the tragedy of job loss and dis­lo­ca­tion of mi­grant Bi­hari work­ers (caused by an un­planned lock­down) but also used state re­sources, to ad­vance the elec­toral for­tunes of NDA in Bi­har.

Wit­ness how the ad­dress to the na­tion did not men­tion of the in­flamed north­ern fron­tier, Nepal and China. The bulk of the speech fo­cused on the ex­ten­sion of GOI schemes for the poor, which could have been (and should have been) an­nounced by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter of the gov­ern­ment of In­dia. But then the FM is not a vote catcher, the PM is.

De­lib­er­ate and cal­cu­lated ref­er­ence to chat puja, the most pop­u­lar mass fes­ti­val of Bi­har, while an­nounc­ing the ex­ten­sion till No­vem­ber 2020 of free ra­tion to the poor; the Hon’ble PM did not only use the tragedy of job loss and dis­lo­ca­tion of mi­grant Bi­hari work­ers (caused by an un­planned lock­down) but also used state re­sources, to ad­vance the elec­toral for­tunes of NDA in Bi­har.

Un­eth­i­cal and cal­lous, as this episode of ad­dress to the na­tion may be, there’s how­ever a sil­ver lin­ing. We should thank our lucky stars that there were no knee jerk an­nounce­ments that throw daily life out of gear. No abrupt an­nounce­ments of de­mon­e­ti­za­tion, or lock­down, it was a sim­ple at­tempt to use mis­eries of the com­mon peo­ple and tax­pay­er’s money to ad­vance the po­lit­i­cal agenda of PM’s po­lit­i­cal plat­form.

The hype, there­fore, may be so much ado about an egg, at least it was­n’t a potato.

Ku­mar San­jay Singh is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of His­tory at the Swami Shrad­dhanand Col­lege, Uni­ver­sity of Delhi with spe­cial­i­sa­tion in Mu­ta­tions in In­dian State for­ma­tion post-1947, Ex­tra­or­di­nary laws es­pe­cially In­ter­nal Se­cu­rity Leg­is­la­tions and Hu­man Rights with spe­cial fo­cus on North-east In­dia and Adi­vasi so­ci­ety.