Opinion The Modi model

The “peace initiative” is seen as an image makeover exercise. A front-page article and the lead editorial in the Organiser declare that Modi stands tall after the ruling. It claims that despite the “good work” he has done in Gujarat in the last ten years,“a well-funded,centrally patronised,viciously communal and biased lobby of agent provocateurs flourished,spreading canards,delaying and undermining justice at every turn.”

Both pieces attack what they term the “dubious,self-appointed social activist brigade and the partisan media” for delaying justice to the victims of the post-Godhra riots.

Panchjanya went so far as to refer to Modi as the “vikas purush”,a title that so far had been used for former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee.

The Bangladesh deal

The Sangh has begun a campaign against the land-swap agreement signed between India and Bangladesh. The BJP has already set up a study group to look into the issue. The Organiser carries two articles claiming that the agreement caused widespread protests in Assam and West Bengal.

It targets,in particular, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi,saying he defended the decision without discussing the sensitive issue on the floor of the assembly,seeking the approval of the cabinet,andwithout taking the opposition into confidence. “Ten pacts were signed in Dhaka. None was on how to solve the endemic problem of influx of Bangladeshis to Assam whose number has now swelled to 40 lakh. Why did the prime minister and the chief minister not raise the issue of infiltration? Nor was any mechanism evolved or decided to be evolved to take back the detected and identified illegal migrants pushed back to Bangladesh,” it says.

Another piece takes note of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s strident opposition to the Teesta river water-sharing agreement and praises her. It says “Mamata was unperturbed because she thought that it was the nation’s interest which had to be considered first… Mamata was well within the legal parameters as well when she stuck up for her point of not damaging the country’s interest.

A Panchjanya article says: “The irony is that the people living on that land face a question mark on their future. They are no longer Indians,they have become Bangladeshis.”

“Can Bangladesh,which is troubled by fundamentalists,guarantee the safety of these Hindu families? Were the areas,which have been handed over to Bangladesh,not important from India’s security point of view?” the article asks.

Undercutting Anna

In an article in the Organiser,Balbir Punj points out that while Team Anna had decided to seek a performance audit of MPs and demand electoral reforms,they did not utter a word on the arrest of the two former MPs who had acted as whistle-blowers in the July 2008 cash-for-votes scam.

He claims that the UPA government has succeeded in manipulating Hazare through “cunningness” and wonders whether he has achieved any tangible results,given the original aims of the movement.

“Through its Trojan horses in the Anna camp and clever media management,the Congress succeeded in turning the fight against corruption to a mere choice between the two versions of the Lokpal Bill. Further wily manoeuvering sought to pit the civil society against Parliament. The goalpost shifted from the corrupt and corruption to entitlement to draft laws in democracy… The members of Parliament on one hand,and the activists of civil society on the other,fell into the trap,” he says.