BJP Future - 7

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[url="http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/message-from-modi/316608.html"]Message from Modi[/url]



By Bharat Karnad

[...]Modi also targeted vote-bank politics. May be the show of Muslim ‘support’ at the event was a bit of political theatre, in the same league as Congress-wallahs staying overnight in Dalit hutments in the full glare of television cameras. But, there is little doubt that Muslims in the state recognise they are as much beneficiaries of good governance that Modi has delivered as anybody else, and that when he says he will not pander to them it means he will seek their votes as Gujaratis, not as Muslims. While the residents of Naroda-Patia seem unwilling to forgive and forget the incidents of 2002, their insistence on punishing Modi has the potential of again aggravating the communal divide that the spreading prosperity has begun to bridge.



Modi’s emergence on the national scene ensures that, for the first time, there will be a distinct, alternate, ideology for the voters to mull over while keeping in mind its successful run in Gujarat. He offers an antidote to the bankrupt, left-leaning, populism the Congress invariably falls back on when the going gets tough, to wit, the various social welfare schemes, such as MGNREGA, launched in recent times despite mountainous evidence showing that the billions of rupees allotted for such programmes are decanted by ‘middle men’, politicians and officials. Modi’s success in Gujarat emphasises the fact that a strong-minded leader determined on making the administrative system responsible for producing results, can radically transform the defunct, over-bureaucratised, system of government the country is saddled with[...]