After Rejection by BJP, Yashwant Sinha Is in Search of Identity

The victory in an Indian election is based on a politician’s capacity to tell lies and hoodwink the voters most of whom are uneducated. Thus, Modi won the election in 2014 and became the Prime Minister of India.

By Rakesh Raman

Yashwant Sinha – a former minister in India and rebel leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – has just taken a decision which has no meaning at all.

Sinha announced Saturday that he has quit BJP. How does it matter when BJP never considered Sinha as part of the party?

The 80-year-old Sinha waited for 4 long years to get a job in Modi government which was formed in 2014. But when Modi ignored him completely, he has announced his resignation from the party while cursing Modi for his failures as the PM of India. “Democracy is in danger under Modi,” believes Sinha who has been living like a retired man.

As BJP had rejected Sinha, during the past few months he has been desperately trying to gain a foothold in the Indian political arena. In January, he launched a new political outfit National Forum to expose the crime and corruption in Modi government. It was construed as a political coup to dethrone Modi.

Distressed politicians from BJP (mainly an actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha) as well as a few disgruntled people from opposition parties had expressed willingness to join National Forum.

Although it was positioned as a non-political group, it was supposed to lead a campaign against Modi government with the aim to defeat Modi and his party BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Defunct National Forum

But National Forum proved to be a stillborn project and became dormant before even making its presence felt in the Indian political circles. Obviously, Sinha was dejected.

Of late, he even tried to get close to inconsequential outfits such as Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi-based Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which has become a new symbol of lawlessness and corruption in Indian politics.

When Sinha failed on all fronts, he decided to run sheepishly from BJP. But what will he do now? As he is an unskilled man like other politicians of India, he will not be able to independently lead any reform movement in the country. Sinha will keep trying subtly to get entry into a political party – however small or corrupt it may be.

But can he defeat his bête noire Modi? No way. Modi is an expert liar – a quality that is required to win elections in India. The victory in an Indian election is based on a politician’s capacity to tell lies and hoodwink the voters most of whom are uneducated.

Thus, with a plethora of lies in his speeches Modi won the election in 2014 and became the PM. Now, with an eye on next year’s Lok Sabha election, he has again started telling lies about his performance during the past 4 years of his regime.

Modi tells lies so comfortably that most uneducated and distressed people trust him because they see a ray of hope in his falsehood. While voters who vote in Indian elections are mostly poor, uneducated, and ignorant who can easily be cheated by corrupt politicians with their false promises, politicians like Modi can never get defeated.

So, by getting about 30% of votes by hook or by crook from totally illiterate and poor people, a political party can win any Indian election and incompetent politicians like Modi can become rulers of the entire country.

BJP Victory in Lok Sabha Election

Sinha and other politicians in opposition parties are living in a fool’s paradise if they think that they can defeat Modi in the Lok Sabha election which is scheduled to take place in 2019.

A senior BJP leader and India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh said last week that his party under the leadership of Modi will easily win the Lok Sabha election of next year. He is right.

Although the opposition parties are joining forces to defeat Modi and BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha election, in all probability BJP will win again to form the government next year.

Last month, Sonia Gandhi – the former president of India’s Congress party and the mother of present Congress chief Rahul Gandhi – had invited leaders of all opposition parties to chalk out a strategy to defeat Modi and BJP in the Lok Sabha election.

Although most opposition leaders have diametrically different views on many areas of national interest, the one-point agenda of their artificial union is to dethrone Modi.

However, the move is not likely to work because Modi’s popularity is increasing across the country which is manifested in BJP’s recent victories in most state elections such as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and North East including Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Tripura.

This article is part of our exclusive editorial section that focuses on Lok Sabha Election 2019 in India.

Modi also has managed to get good global ratings in his favour. Of late, Modi and a leading Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan featured at the top among Indians in the list of world’s most admired people for 2018.

The new YouGov’s annual study has covered the views of people in 35 countries where it had interviewed more than 37,000 people to compile the list.

Currently, as part of the National Democratic Alliance (a group of parties which have 315 seats), BJP alone has 272 elected members in the 543-member Lok Sabha.

Keeping in view the current electoral trends in which no other political party has a leader of Modi’s stature, BJP can easily hope to rule the country for another 5 years – until 2024.

It will give a chance to disgruntled politicians like Yashwant Sinha to sulk and curse Modi from a distance for a few more years. Nothing less, nothing more.

By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.

Photo courtesy: National Forum