Toning down the acche din rhetoric: Modi govt goes all out to re-establish its people connect

Acche din aane walen hain a phrase coined by Piyush Pandey to boost the Narendra Modi campaign in 2014 has survived far more than a pre-poll catch phrase would otherwise be expected to. No media interaction of senior BJP leaders, among the hundreds of them being held across the country, is complete without a question on acche din. It’s a question that weighs heavily on minds of ruling BJP leaders and one to which there is no clear cut, well crafted answer. Communication Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has attempted one saying that though he wouldn’t still claim that acche din have for come all but the work in right direction was in progress. [caption id=“attachment_2265616” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] PTI image[/caption] The BJP knows the pitfalls of a catchphrase only too well after its experience with ‘India Shining’ and ‘Feel Good’ that it used in 2004. The ruling party leadership realises that its now popular catchphrase was a very perfect before the polls and that it fired the imagination of the people. However, a claim to same effect while in government could be counter productive, as it would also give political opponents a handle to ridicule them with. The notion of good times though is dependent on governance and delivery without leakages but this is hugely subjective, shaped by a variety of factors. A mature society and electorate weighs delivery of goods against intentions and the state’s perceived ability to work in transparent manner for welfare of people. Modi, a hard working and astute politician has attempted to turn his original slogan on its head. In Sanghai he used a line from the immortal song from Mother India: dukh bhare din beete re bhaiya. He didn’t add the next line: ab sukh aayo re, leaving the audience to fill it in themselves. At Mathura, Modi asserted that bure din were over and bad days, if at all there were any, would be only for brokers and damaads, in a hint at Robert Vadra. His choice to formally launch a week-long “Jan Kalyan Parv” on the completion of a year in Deen Dayal Dham, about 20 km from Mathura, came after careful consideration. As he said, usually such events are planned in big cities but BJP had different ideas. The party brass considered three options: the native village of Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the home town of its foremost ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay or the hometown of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They ultimately chose Upadhyay’s native village in Mathura. It’s in politically sensitive UP, a state Modi now represents in Parliament, and Mathura has always been significant for the Sangh Parivar. But the clincher was the fact that Upadhyay had propounded the antyodaya philosophy, which speaks of delivery of goods down to the last man in the queue. Modi was not only honouring the party’s foremost icon but also trying to convey a message that his government believed in antyodaya and was working for the poor. He was also trying to counter charges by his rivals that his government was pro-corporate. Given farmers and agriculture are the political flavour of the season, Modi launched a channel dedicated to news for farmers. A large portion of his speech in Mathura was also devoted to the measures his government was taking for long term welfare of the agriculturists. There was a feeling that Modi government and the BJP had not been communicating effectively with people and was thus losing out in a war of perceptions. It was due to this that the party decided to turn the first anniversary of Modi government into a mass contact program where all its leaders – ranging from the PM to all ministers, chief ministers, MPs, MLAs and all central and state office bearers down to tehsil level — holding rallies of varying sizes and press conferences. Most surveys conducted by leading media houses indicate that Modi’s rating continues to be high among people. He however has to hasten pace of delivery of government programmes. Since all ministers will be out of the capital for next four days the bureaucrats can afford to relax a bit and discuss their own varying interpretations of acche din.