In an Opinion Poll survey if you are asked to chose among two devils, the participant will have no choice but to chose the lesser devil and get all the blame of being a devil himself. If you widen the choice by including a statesman in 3rd place, there won’t be any catch 22 situation for the participant. The statesman will be the clear winner. This is what exactly happened in Uttar Pradesh to day in 2017 UP polls.
I had been to Uttar Pradesh in 2009 & 2012 election time. I toured Amethi, Raebareli, Lucknow, Kanpur, Haridwar etc The people, their living standards,poverty and prosperity and all, almost similar to rest of India. In UP, it was evident that the people had then made up their mind to vote for SP. I realized how easy it was to predict a SP win then and be a psephologist too.
Over 6 decades the people of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and MP were tormented with caste and religious politics.The media was the Master Chef all the time, cooking with ingredients of caste, religion, gender, regional parochialism, and forced the people to swallow it only to blame them later for being parochial.
This time the BJPs own Dark (White) Knight Amit Shah, stormed the UP’s caste citadel, and captured it with style like Baahubali. But well after his ground work in UP, PM Modi has sent a mesmerizing cloud seeding called ‘Demonetization’ and it did all the wonders in UP, just when Shah was ready with enough saplings planted there.
Let’s see how this worked in a mesmerizing manner and united the aam aadmi, beyond caste and religious barricades. A Muslim poor, a Dalit poor, a Brahmin poor all stood in queues before the ATMs, and Poll booths to send their strong message to the nation that ‘-sab ka saath-sab ka vikas’ and they have one common characteristic among them, that is ‘poverty’.
But then, how about Amit Shah’s ground work like cadre mobilization, cadre expansion ,booth workers, parivarthan vans, caste based, gender based, youth based events etc? Yes, these events have certainly mobilized the people in favor of BJP by then, yet the required positive under current to translate the emotion in to votes was to hit. That vacuum has been filled by Demonetization.
Demonetization ‘good feeling’ reached 126 crores people slowly and steadily.
Never in the past, never in the history of post Independent India, probably even in the world, no single announcement of a President, or Prime Minister has reached 99% of the population of India as the announcement of Demonetization by PM Modi did reach. This one announcement had created a sense of triumph over the evils of black money, terror funding, drug peddling, human trafficking, counterfeit notes menace, stone pelting, opium trade, gold smuggling, black money transaction in real estate, sand mafia, Pak sponsored terrorism, Bollywood etc all in one stroke, undone.
One more aspect of Demonetization is that, it came from horse mouth. Had it been announced by our Finance Minister or RBI Governor, the scenario to day would have certainly been different and far below the cloud 9 that we are floating to day.
Demonetization has worked like a fission reaction starting on 8th November 2016.
This is the age of high digital publicity. Be it AirTel 4G, Dettol cool soap, Surf Excel they spend few crores, and the reach is below 40 million. But PM Narendra Modi’s 8th November announcement with almost at zero cost, started like a nuclear chain reaction and spread nook and corners of India touching almost 125 crore citizens of this country with a message from Robin Hood of India that is Modi. This is where Modi s ingenious decision almost decimated the opposition.
Demonetization had caused riots in Burma as the then Ne Win regime’s sudden demonetization order in 1987 that made 70 to 80 percent of all kyat (Burmese currency) banknotes worthless, without compensation. Yes, with out any compensation. Here Modi thro RBI started monitoring the situation after the announcement bit by bit, and asked the people to bear a small pain and exchange the notes with the new ones with 100% value in tact. This is where common man realized the common sense and probity of the order and supported the drive wholeheartedly.
Every banned note of Rs 500/ and Rs 1000/- in India and abroad worked as a magic wand. Every note in aam aadmi’s hand was constantly echoing in the ears of the poor, telling a story of PM Modi and his mission to eradicate poverty, eliminate black money to help the poor and BPL citizens of this country. People started standing in long Qs, in front of Banks and ATM’s, and were constantly feeling in their hands, and wallets, the bold and monumental step that has been taken by the PM Modi with a good intention of snatching such valuable instruments from the hands and lockers of undeserved filthy rich, and a channelling in to Banks for people’s welfare.
The bravery of common man is all for kudos from us, when the common man faced the hostile media. They gave a fitting reply and stood by the PM.
Hence the Modi bashing badly boomeranged on the face of the opposition leaders in most disrespectful manner.
After the PM Modi’s demonetization speech on 8th November 2016, PM Modi has become Robin Hood of India for the poor of this country.
Modi demolished the Caste and Religious bastions of UP
First in the history of UP, Muslims have voted as aam aadmi on par with the rest, not as a Muslim
BJP swept Burhana, Khatauli, Meerpur, Purqazi, Charatwa, Moradabad, Bijnor, Saharanpur and Bareeilly
Top OBC seats went to BJP >Lalithpur, Banda, Tindwar, Chitrakoot,
SC seats like Machlishahr, Muhammadabad and rural seats Gorakhpur, Agra, Orai, Chakia, Shajanwa in all BJP victorious.
A major shift in UP election is, a realization has dawned on Muslims. Muslims disliked dubbing the entire community as a lump of religious bigots having no sense of assimilation of economic issues on par with their counterparts, but keep voting to a candidate of his own community in dozy way.
Added to this sense of isolation, the local electronic media have cornered Muslims in open TV debates, embarrassed them, shamed them in the presence of progressive minded Hindu intellectuals as a ghetto living community. A handful of communal Mullah’s embarrassed the whole Muslims, when they openly buttressed the anti nationals, Triple Talaq backers, Pakistani brokers, home grown terrorists all in the name of Secularism? So it is but natural Muslims in UP silently subjected themselves to an introspection by questioning their consciousness ‘why I should vote an Indian only if he happens to be a Muslim, and why I should hate a fellow Hindu, if he refuses to wear a skullcap, why an Indian leader if he or she happens to be a Hindu, should remove her Mangal Sutra chain, remove her bindi, only to please us? What if BJP had not fielded not a single Muslim from it’s fold? should I shun the party for this reason alone?
When my fellow poor Hindus, may be a Jat, Dalit,Singh, Brahmin all are going ga ga about Demonetization, why me being a Muslim should not join the chorus? Am I not as poor as my fellow Hindus? Did Modi any time attempt to divide Indians on the caste and religious lines.
All of could be overstretch of imagination but things on ground are definitely changing.
UP has punished Punya Prasson Bajpai, Ravish Kumar, Rahul Kanwal, Shekhar Gupta, Barkha Dutts, more than Akhilesh, Mayawathi, Rahul Gandhi etc.
The 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections will remain a watershed point in Indian Democracy and a lesson to the Global students of Sociology and Polity.
