Aadhaar and the dictatorship
I strongly urge you to read 'The Dictator's handbook'. It is an excellent book to understand how the world works. A lot of things India's PM is doing is textbook strategy to consolidate and maintain power. The book helps us understand him not as a despot (as understood by the left) and messiah (for right), but a power hungry leader who will stop at nothing to consolidate his fiefdom.
The beauty of his strategy is in the fact that he has managed to whip up sentiments of masses that allow him to strip them of their rights and wealth, without them even complaining. That is the best kind of shakedown.
The point is - it is not about BJP or congress really. Any one in power would do these things to various degrees. What makes BJP more worrisome is its comfort to use hate to divide the people. Besides its sheer incompetence at planning - look at Aadhar, GST rollout for examples.
The point is - no matter who is in power, they have to be seen as the one's in power and as such questioned and made to toe the line. Without checks and balances, there is no hope for a nation. The powerful will obviously seek to strengthen their privilege at whatever costs. It is our duty to make those costs dear to them.
I am getting ahead of myself here, really. So here's the reading of PM's strategy in his quest to become the czar.
1. Yes men electorate
By appealing to the imaginary glory days of hinduism, Modi has become champion of the majority while doing nothing actually beneficial for the majority. Only he wins and everyone loses. He wins popularity even as everyone loses freedoms (loss of privacy with aadhaar card, threat of censorship, self censorship imposed by militia promoted by the ruling party), opportunities (attack on universities and humanities especially, ghettoisation by social populism) and wealth (finance bill and aadhaar card linkages - they want everyone's taxes, but they won't own up if financial theft/ vulnerability/ freedoms are pointed out.)
He has effectively 'othered' most detractors -
Intellectuals (with attack on universities)
Dalits (with police power when no one's watching and with tokenism when on display)
Muslims ("beef eating anti-nationals", triple talaq moral high ground, giving space for hate-mongering, conspiracy theories)
The farmers - (Crashed the farm economy and instilled the fear of being branded 'anti-nationals' / corrupt because they deal in cash.)
The soldiers - (A soldier complaints of bad living conditions and bad food owing to corruption in army. Instead of punishing the culprits, the whistle-blowers goes missing.)
Essentially, anybody who complains will get the stick.
2. The stick gets longer and more potent
Finance bill - mindless power to the taxman - essentially, govt can harass anyone who becomes inconvenient. There is simply no other reason for making redressal of complaints so difficult.
And the lynch mobs and loud trolls do their best to silence you in every other sphere of life.
3. Keep the populace under-educated
Schools in Rajasthan and other BJP states have become little more than propaganda machines. The quality of education remains abysmal.
Humanities, Social sciences departments are being systematically deleted from the university campuses. India will only have dim-wit engineers and doctors who lack perspective. This is textbook dictatorial - You want your population to be productive, but not intelligent enough to ask inconvenient questions.
4. Control the wealth of the nation
Aadhaar+PAN Linkage will lead to every citizen's movements, transactions, wealth visible to the state. Even as people in power escape that scrutiny by not letting RTI question political party affairs, or as panama papers/ swiss bank revealations do not get acted upon.
The beauty of his strategy is in the fact that he has managed to whip up sentiments of masses that allow him to strip them of their rights and wealth, without them even complaining. That is the best kind of shakedown.
The point is - it is not about BJP or congress really. Any one in power would do these things to various degrees. What makes BJP more worrisome is its comfort to use hate to divide the people. Besides its sheer incompetence at planning - look at Aadhar, GST rollout for examples.
The point is - no matter who is in power, they have to be seen as the one's in power and as such questioned and made to toe the line. Without checks and balances, there is no hope for a nation. The powerful will obviously seek to strengthen their privilege at whatever costs. It is our duty to make those costs dear to them.
I am getting ahead of myself here, really. So here's the reading of PM's strategy in his quest to become the czar.
1. Yes men electorate
By appealing to the imaginary glory days of hinduism, Modi has become champion of the majority while doing nothing actually beneficial for the majority. Only he wins and everyone loses. He wins popularity even as everyone loses freedoms (loss of privacy with aadhaar card, threat of censorship, self censorship imposed by militia promoted by the ruling party), opportunities (attack on universities and humanities especially, ghettoisation by social populism) and wealth (finance bill and aadhaar card linkages - they want everyone's taxes, but they won't own up if financial theft/ vulnerability/ freedoms are pointed out.)
He has effectively 'othered' most detractors -
Intellectuals (with attack on universities)
Dalits (with police power when no one's watching and with tokenism when on display)
Muslims ("beef eating anti-nationals", triple talaq moral high ground, giving space for hate-mongering, conspiracy theories)
The farmers - (Crashed the farm economy and instilled the fear of being branded 'anti-nationals' / corrupt because they deal in cash.)
The soldiers - (A soldier complaints of bad living conditions and bad food owing to corruption in army. Instead of punishing the culprits, the whistle-blowers goes missing.)
Essentially, anybody who complains will get the stick.
2. The stick gets longer and more potent
Finance bill - mindless power to the taxman - essentially, govt can harass anyone who becomes inconvenient. There is simply no other reason for making redressal of complaints so difficult.
And the lynch mobs and loud trolls do their best to silence you in every other sphere of life.
3. Keep the populace under-educated
Schools in Rajasthan and other BJP states have become little more than propaganda machines. The quality of education remains abysmal.
Humanities, Social sciences departments are being systematically deleted from the university campuses. India will only have dim-wit engineers and doctors who lack perspective. This is textbook dictatorial - You want your population to be productive, but not intelligent enough to ask inconvenient questions.
4. Control the wealth of the nation
Aadhaar+PAN Linkage will lead to every citizen's movements, transactions, wealth visible to the state. Even as people in power escape that scrutiny by not letting RTI question political party affairs, or as panama papers/ swiss bank revealations do not get acted upon.
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