When Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of United States of America defined democracy as, ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’, he surely meant that the head of the government is accountable and available to the people.
Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world, is neither accountable nor available to the people of the country. Anybody, questioning actions and inactions of the Prime Minister are immediately termed anti-national by his cronies.
Modi, is a busy man. Over the last 66 days, his phone was busy, just as he was, talking to state chief ministers and world leaders. He was busy with many other functions, including the Dev Deepavali celebrations in Varanasi. It is good that he has now found time to learn that farmers are protesting on the outskirts of Delhi. It was as if the Prime Minister was in deep slumber, not aware of the problems of the farmers and their agitation.
Yesterday, Modi announced that he is only a phone call away for the farmers to meet him for discussion on their demands. He repeated the statement today too.
On the face of it, it would seem that the Prime Minister is accessible to the farmers and that he is concerned about their situation. At least, that is the impression the ardent and blind supporters of Modi feel. Modi will go down in history as the most inaccessible Prime Minister in the country. There have been Prime Ministers, who have held Janata Darbars, where the ordinary citizens could meet the head of the government to speak about their problems. That was a Diwan-e-Aam; under the present regime there is no Diwan-e-Aam, it is only a Diwan-e-Khaas.
The reality is not so. Modi is the Prime Minister, who is protected by the best force in the country and his residence is like a fortress. His phone numbers are not in the public domain, so he needs to clarify how the leaders should contact him and which of the numerous leaders could call him up. A leader of the farmers appealed to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson on a television channel yesterday, to give him Modi’s number so that he could call him up. The spokesperson was dumbfound, just the way another spokesperson was when he was asked how many zeroes does a trillion have, when he was shouting himself hoarse about how Modi will take the Indian economy to Rs 5 trillion. Those speaking of a Rs 5 trillion economy, should read Prof Arun Kumar’s latest book Indian Economy: Worst Crisis. Anyway, the BJP and the government has stopped speaking about Rs 5 trillion economy.
Modi is known to isolate himself from issues and from people who many have questions for him. He does not like to be questioned. Even dictatorial leaders do not like to be questioned. He does not like to meet delegations of people making demands; he does not like to meet media persons either, as they question him. His blind supporters may claim that he has given interviews to journalists, in his capacity as the Prime Minister. That is a debatable situation, since those who could interview him for the television channels were great actors, not journalists. It was clear that they had been given a script that they had to follow and while doing so, the actors were engaged in Modi’s undeserved adulation. Journalists, ask questions, actors follow the script.
All these days, Modi has ignored the farmers protesting on the outskirts of the national capital. This is what he did as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, when the state burned and there was unprecedented killing of people in one of the worst communal riots.
A good leader goes to the site of the trouble to understand the problems of the people and to assure them that their interests would be protected, but this is about a good leader.
Modi does go to the people when it comes to begging for support for his party and to make him a perceived strong and popular leader. What stops the Prime Minister from going down to the site of the farmers protest? Such a visit would have given him more milage than his ‘surprise’ visits to a Gurudwara in Delhi or to the ‘front’ miles away from the Sino-India border.
If he is serious about a personal discussion with the farmers’ leaders, he should take the initiative and invite them for talks. His superego will prevent him from doing so.