The first Budget Session of the Eighteenth Lok Sabha begins on Monday, 22 July. It is a new beginning, an unexpected one because the mood and the media buzz in the run-up to the 2024 elections were that Modi would come back with all the trappings of his 56” chest, which he was indeed thumping a bit too hard during the campaign. We heard much about Modi’s Guarantees and less about the Ruling Dispensation’s promises and plans. We did not miss the continued diatribe about the Nehru-Gandhi family and the monotonous narrative of how bad the RaGa-Priyanka combine, would be for India.
Some of us with uncompromised political independence were wondering about the overkill of Modi’s rhetoric which was also peppered with not-too-subtle hints of how the Opposition was indulging in Muslim appeasement, a phrase that had become jaded and drained of any impact over the past decade of its repeated overuse.
The post-election reality is that much to perhaps his own amazement, Rahul has found a new image, improved confidence and wider acceptability as someone who could stand up to a rather extended campaign that had essentially become plain political bullying.
The electioneering saw Rahul Gandhi also sinking low in the decency of narratives. His close associates and mentors of sorts, Kharge and Jairam Ramesh, started giving straight hits back to the googlies of Modi. True, the whole drama vitiated the political climate.
But true to the Indian epics, like the churning of the sea bringing up the submerged mountain, the mudslinging by either side resulted in the emergence of a rejuvenated Opposition, a renewed Congress Party and re-energised allies.
The question is who deserves the credit for the obvious turnaround of Congress and the Opposition. In the past, we used to hear, in a lighter vein, that Modi’s best bet, his insurance policy for re-election was RaGa with his non-serious, flippant and inconsistent ways as a political opponent. Now the gossip is that Modi has been busy all these years re-energising and relaunching RaGa.
That is the beauty and uniqueness of Indian democracy. Here was a PM who bent backwards and single-mindedly worked at giving oxygen and a lifeline to the one leader in the Opposition whom he castigated mercilessly all these years.
Now Modi is, by a quirk of destiny, RaGa’s insurance policy instead of the other way!
The good thing is that the world now thinks that India has averted relapsing into being a banana republic and the political pundits all around are admiringly looking at the raw judgement and swift reflexes of the supposedly ill-educated and not-too-sophisticated aam admi of India who have the power to evaporate the inflated ego of any politician, howsoever powerful!
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