After the Failure of Anti-CAA Protests, Swaraj India Launches Mission Jai Hind

After leaving the anti-CAA protesters in the lurch, Yogendra Yadav has changed his track to launch an irrelevant “Mission Jai Hind” gimmick because its impact cannot be measured.

By Rakesh Raman

A little-known political outfit in Delhi has embarked upon a colossal task of creating an utopian culture in India, which has been plagued by misery, poverty, sickness, and widespread devastation.

Swaraj India – headed by its president Yogendra Yadav – launched a new campaign Saturday (July 4) under the banner “Mission Jai Hind” which is supposed to run for 100 days. God only knows for how many days it will survive.

With the support of a handful of volunteers, the all-in-one movement aims to help the country of 1.4 billion people tackle all its social, economic, and health problems once and for all.

According to the campaign, these volunteers – regardless of their strength- will go to villages (nearly 650,000 villages are in India) and countless slums of the country with the aim to deal with coronavirus and perpetuating economic crisis.

Sounds strange, but this is the only way all politicians and political groups operate in India. They need to be overtly deceitful to hoodwink the voters and survive in the dirty Indian politics. Perhaps, Yadav is not aware of the magnitude of crises that he promises to address.

Although the Indian governments (State as well as Central) are giving understated figures of Covid infections, independent health experts estimate that over 100 million Indians are already infected and in the absence of infrastructure to dispose of the Covid-infected dead bodies, mass dumping of corpses is taking place.

As regards economic upheaval, today more than 60% of India’s population (or 800 million people) cannot have two square meals a day and depend on government succor which is hardly available.

When Swaraj India claims it can address these problems, obviously it is telling lies. The crassness of its work can be seen in the fact that the party leader Yogendra Yadav is delivering a shallow sermon on coronavirus when people around him are standing close to each other without wearing face masks (see picture above).

POLITICAL VACUUM

Since his focus is only on deceptive politics, Yadav did not tell the participants to maintain physical distance and wear masks – the essential prerequisites to contain the Covid-19 contagion.

In his message, the Swaraj India leader said that the government is washing its hands of the health and economic crises and his “Mission Jai Hind” will work as a silver bullet to save Indians from all impending disasters.

In a recent article, Yadav also warned that the mainstream opposition parties in India have lost their relevance in the political game being played by PM Narendra Modi and his close associate Home Minister Amit Shah. In order to overcome the political vacuum, Yadav suggests to usher in a new political model on the lines of his “Mission Jai Hind.”

But Yadav’s rhetoric is usually limited to only a few tweets or noisy TV debates or a few articles randomly published here and there. He and his party Swaraj India have repeatedly failed to prove their relevance in the Indian politics driven by bigotry and authoritarianism.

Although Yadav has tasted the flavor of contemporary Indian political model that works as a despotic system of governance under the garb of democracy, he refuses to learn from his experiences.

FAILURE OF ANTI-CAA PROTESTS

He knows that his “Mission Jai Hind” drama will not go beyond a few streets, but he is trying to position it as a national campaign to target the Modi government. If his new campaign tried to gain public support, it will be mercilessly crushed by the authorities like it happened in the case of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests that challenged the decisions of the Modi government.

After leaving the anti-CAA protesters in the lurch (most of whom are languishing in jails under false allegations), Yadav has changed his track to launch an irrelevant “Mission Jai Hind” gimmick because its impact cannot be measured to hold him accountable for its debacle.

The top priority of Yadav’s “Mission Jai Hind” should be to get the CAA protesters – students and others – released from jails. This will be the first test of the authenticity of his intentions. Otherwise, people will not get associated with any of Swaraj India campaigns.

The party keeps floating such halfhearted Twitter campaigns to give unsolicited advice to the government. But the truth is that its advice falls on deaf ears because Swaraj India has not reached the stature from where it could be heard.

NEW POLITICAL MODEL

Yadav and Swaraj India must realize that they will not be able to apply their idea of politics with a few tweets or social media messages. They need to create a comprehensive content platform in multiple languages to identify the problems in India and offer corresponding solutions.

Each solution should have a distinct roadmap to achieve it. The entire exercise needs to be brought to the level of a freedom movement. Swaraj India must also know that no freedom movement can be run from the comforts of your home. Street is the only place to begin and continue any struggle.

At this juncture, Swaraj India should not invite volunteers to handle the mundane tasks such as coronavirus awareness interactions. Rather, it needs to enroll volunteers who want to restore true democracy in the country.

And in their long-haul struggle, they should be ready to face police brutality and go to jails even under false charges. The first group of such volunteers should be the top brass of Swaraj India party.

This is the only pathway to introduce the new political model that Yadav and his party aspire to apply in India.

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. He also creates and publishes a number of digital publications and research reports on different subjects. These publications include the “Covid Health Bulletin” that covers global coronavirus news and views.