Welcome to Modistan

Can one imagine David Cameron or Barack Obama or Angela Merkel or Francois Hollande making trips abroad, while their respective countries reel from blood-soaked trails of the most sinister scam? Can one imagine the leaders not succumbing to calls for resignation, when that scam leaves behind 48 unexplained deaths?
Logic says they should step aside till a highest-level investigation clears the names of their party men. But the thick-skinned Indian premier is not only tight-lipped over the issue facing his country, he is also unperturbed with his cohorts telling the media that Narendra Modi need not comment on such “silly” issues.
The Vyapam scam in the Madhya Pradesh state is an admission and recruitment scandal involving politicians, senior officials and businessmen. The scam involves a collusion of undeserving candidates, who bribed politicians and the board officials responsible for conducting exams through middlemen to get high ranks in entrance tests. The rigged tests produced unqualified teachers, medical officers, constables and forest guards.
Social media savvy Modi who even tweets on Tunisia, Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh is yet to post one word on Vyapam, whose victims include policemen, journalists, doctors, teachers, intermediaries and more, who have died in unexplained accidents, mysterious suicides and puzzling heart attacks.
Modi who is currently enjoying Uzbekistan’s hospitality has nothing to offer the country trying to make sense of suspicious deaths because most of the victims were young and a vital link to the $1 billion scam.
It is becoming clearer by the day that masterminds of Vyapam, that involves the MP governor and the chief minister, are some top-notch politicians and business magnates who can have any number of people killed to save their skin. The nation is already wary of a top-level politician in Modi’s Cabinet deemed responsible for various fake encounters in Gujarat but who couldn’t face justice because of lack of evidence.
Modi’s apologists have been diligently trying to maintain the premier’s pro-business and pro-investment image, but in the words of Ruchir Sharma, who oversees more than $25 billion as New York-based head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, “India is still aspiring to be an economic miracle.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party tom-tommed its transparency and political probity to come to power, as the Congress was neck-deep in various corruption quagmires. But deep-rooted favoritism and financial corruption have already exposed the ruling Hindu extremist party. The furor around fugitive ex-Indian Premier League boss Lalit Modi refuses to end. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s argument that she helped the scam-tainted ex-cricket boss on humanitarian grounds as his wife was suffering from cancer has not satisfied the opposition and even some of her own colleagues. Parallel to it, the BJP’s trump card in Rajasthan, Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje, secretly supported Lalit Modi’s bid to obtain immigration documents in the UK.
As if this much “women power” was not enough, Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani — an undergraduate — has been found to have submitted to the Election Commission a fake educational degree. A Delhi court has taken cognizance of a complaint against her.
Maharashtra’s Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde, with her own over Rs200-crore corruption, has added another feather in the BJP’s cap. A complaint has been registered by the Congress against a department headed by Pankaja, which alleges that she awarded contracts for school items without inviting tenders.
BJP’s Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh is facing the heat in the Rs36,000-crore “public distribution” scandal. The opposition has alleged a shoddy cover-up job to save Singh.
It is difficult to say which saffron trait — ministerial-level corruption or state-sponsored communalism — takes the cake. In Modi’s India, education is being systematically de-secularized. Irani has been accused of working to destroy reputed institutions, insult educationalists and appoint unqualified saffron functionaries on high positions.
It is surprising to note the BJP leaders are using food as a weapon. NYT’s Sonia Faleiro has rightly pointed out that the BJP’s decisions threaten to make India’s children — already among the most undernourished in the world — weaker still. Madhya Pradesh has banned eggs in free meals at government schools, because eggs are a non-vegetarian food, abhorred by some Hindus.
As for the BJP’s beef ban, it is a body blow to the poor. Beef, unlike mutton and chicken, is cheap. It is an important source of protein for low-caste Dalits, and for minority communities like Muslims and Christians. Hindus consider cows sacred, but ultra-nationalists have lobbied aggressively on the issue, not out of concern for the animals — which live on garbage — but to force their religious beliefs on non-Hindus.
India under Modi has seen a plethora of anti-Muslim designs. A recent one is the outrageous de-recognition of madrasas by the BJP government in Maharashtra. The ill-timed and ill-designed move has drawn outrage from Muslims and opposition parties.
The Atali riot, in which a mosque was destroyed, in Haryana has followed the horror story of Muzaffarnagar in UP — pointing to the fact that the principal minority continues to be the softest and the most favorite target of pseudo nationalists.
The government’s attempts to make singing of Vande Mataram mandatory in public schools have left the principal minority livid, as Muslims do not bow to anyone other than Almighty Allah.
Radical Hindu leaders such as Sadhvi Niranjan, Sadhvi Prachi, Yogi Adityanath, Pravin Togadia, Varun Gandhi and Giriraj Singh are outdoing each other in spitting venom against Muslims. Prachi took this brazenness to a new level when she publicly threatened Muslims that if devotees are attacked on their way to Hindu shrines, the Hajis will face consequences.
Why has the government taken no punitive action against hate mongers? The answer lies in what Rohini Salian, Maharashtra’s public prosecutor in Hindu terror cases, including the Samjhauta Express blasts, told Indian Express: “Since this new government came, I have been told to go soft on Hindu extremists.”
Modi used to lampoon Manmohan Singh for being a silent PM. The premier’s own silence over disastrous developments points to complicity.