The Narendra Modi government has not indulged in vote bank politics and decisions have been taken by the government that may not be conducive to the electorate but for the good of people, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Thursday during a talk on change in politics in the Modi era. Shah delivered a talk on ‘Indian Polity: 65 years scenario and paradigm shift under PM Modi’ organised by the RSS communication platform Samvada at the Town Hall in Bengaluru on Thursday evening. “We maintain that the Narendra Modi government has not taken decisions that are pleasing to the people. The Narendra Modi government has taken decisions that are good for the people. There is a difference,” the Union home minister said. “One doctor says go to sleep when you have malaria and that your resistance is low. However, what is good for the patient is strong medicine. Whether it is GST, demonetisation, the lifting of politics above casteism, or being tough against corruption – in all these issues, there will be resistance and the vote bank gets hurt, but we have not done vote bank politics and we have moved forward,” Shah said while suggesting this was a paradigm shift in politics. “Politics has moved from privilege to potential and an environment of power for potential has been created since 2014. Earlier, only members of the ruling families would get opportunities so politics was a privilege. It was a scenario where only if you were born into certain families you could rule and otherwise you were useless,” he suggested. “Now we have a scenario where those who have the potential can move ahead. This is a big paradigm shift. Secondly, casteism, dynastic politics, and appeasement, which dragged down policy-making, have gone. Decisions were taken on the basis of caste. On the basis of lineage, opportunities were given and in the name of appeasement, budgets were created,” he said. “Our government has liberated the politics of the country from these shackles. The BJP’s contribution to politics in the country will be remembered forever. These three issues dragged the country down earlier,” Shah claimed. The Union home minister said that the socialist parties in the country gradually became caste parties and later descended into becoming family parties like the RJD of Lalu Yadav and the JDS in Karnataka. “In the JDS, everyone from a family is involved in electoral politics and so sometimes I wonder who runs their homes,” Shah joked. The BJP government under PM Modi does not look at policy in a piecemeal manner but in its entirety, he claimed. “Modiji comes from a poor family so he can see the reality of the lives of the poor. All programmes of PM Modi are beads on a necklace,” Shah said. The BJP leader called for voters to elect governments by looking at a party and its leadership rather than individuals in a party. “In the BJP, the president of the party does not emerge from lineage to the president of the party. They are elected by the party workers from the party workers,” Shah said. The home minister said that the Congress party lacked any ideology and that it was only a special purpose vehicle to deliver Independence for the country prior to 1947. “The ideology of the BJP is cultural nationalism. This is a pillar of our ideology. All other countries emerged from geopolitics but our country emerged from a geo culture,” he said.
