Pinstripe politics and the deadly design: How "fixed match" was played to sell Modi suit

By RK Misra*
Celebrities can raise stakes to sell suits but a feather-light fabric often betrays a deadly design. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pacesetter pinstripe suit may have fetched palpitation-inducing Rs 4.31crore – and it might help cleanse the sinfully polluted River Ganges, as is projected. But those who watched the exercise undertaken to the drumbeats and cymbal sounds over three days in Surat -- the commercial capital of Gujarat -- know for sure it was a fixed match. The suit that cost the BJP the Delhi gaddi, and Modi his sheen, was put under the hammer in a desperate bid to reclaim the remnants of a tattered ego.
Put up along with 400 other gifts received by Modi after taking over as PM, the suit remained the focal point of attraction for the rich and the famous as well as the poor and the bunched. In the fray were textile magnates and diamond merchants and even a school teacher. Was it a mere coincidence that many of these who went around with cheque in hand had figured in income-tax raids and records? “I have been absolved,” said one under media questioning, while the other claimed no misdemeanor was proven.
Nursery school teacher Rajesh Maheshwari, who offered Rs 1.25 crore, claimed to have stitched the bid through a collection of Rs 50,000 from 250 people! The coming events were casting their shadows ahead on media persons’ Whatsapp groups in Gujarat much in advance. That a Rs 5 crore target had been fixed in deference to instructions ‘from above’ was known on Day-2. Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar carried a pictorial report by its Surat correspondent showing undated, but signed, cheques with amounts filled in, collected in advance by district administration officials.
Correspondents covering the event spoke of CR Patil, Surat-based BJP MP from Navsari, lurking in the background. A once penalised policeman, Patil had worked his way first to a known Modi baiter, late Union textiles minister Kashiram Rana, and then into the good books of Modi. His are the unseen hands that move mountains in Surat, the diamond capital of India where limited year postings in the constabulary go for over Rs 25 lakh and ‘white' is a distant laggard against ‘black money’ racers.

Nitish-Modi tussle had origins in Surat

Interestingly, the last straw that broke the camel’s back in the tussle between Narendra Modi and the then Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar also has its genesis in Surat and the venerable worthy playing a role in it. In June 2010, during the BJP national executive meet in Patna, big advertisements had appeared in Bihar newspapers in praise of the then Gujarat chief minister and his efforts to aid Bihar during the Kosi floods. This led to Kumar cancelling the official dinner being given in honour of the delegates and returning the Rs 5 crore flood aid cheque back to Gujarat. Subsequently, the BJP and the Janata Dal (United) parted company in view of the irreconcilable differences between Modi and Kumar. Ahmedabad-based advertisement representatives of Bihar newspapers had to lengthen their chase to Surat to bag a bit of the revenue largesse.
If the suit auction in Surat formed the core of an image salvage operation, the spanner in the works came from an officer of the Coast Guard picked up by the press in the same city. The officer claimed to have ordered that a Pakistani fishing vessel be blown up in the sea, debunking a government claim that it was a terror mission gone awry, whose target was the Gujarat coast on the eve of the Pravasiya Bhartiya Diwas and Vibrant Gujarat Global Investor Summit held in Gandhinagar.
Perception management is a key component of any brand building exercise. The truth of the fishing vessel explosion notwithstanding, old ghosts continue to haunt politics and politicos. The bulk of the alleged fake encounters in Gujarat took place to neutralize fidayeen terror outfits attempting to assassinate the then Gujarat chief minister. Almost all of them took place around the time Modi was facing a political challenge or crisis of sorts. The pattern persists even in the vessel affair. As a crisis erupted in Bihar and the BJP moved to fish in troubled waters, another distracting development unfolded in Delhi. It was the Modi government’s action against high profile corporate espionage. Another perception management operation at work? Likely.
The correctives have become necessary after the Delhi debacle. This one is seen by some as an attempt at neutralizing the overly corporate-friendly image the Modi government has vis-a-vis the Ambanis, the Adanis and the like. The two action-packed events had media attention riveted, taking the spotlight away from Bihar. In any case, Chief Minister Manjhi threw in the towel before the trial of strength, leaving little space for the BJP to get involved. Those who have watched the vintage Modi-Shah duo at work can easily predict what will follow. After all, in politics, foxes are the ones who have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

---

*Senior journalist. First published in http://wordsmithsandnewsplumbers.blogspot.in/

Comments

US govt funding 'dubious PR firm' to discredit anti-GM, anti-pesticide activists

By Our Representative The Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) has vocally condemned the financial support provided by the US Government to questionable public relations firms aimed at undermining the efforts of activists opposed to pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in India.

Modi govt distancing from Adanis? MoEFCC 'defers' 1500 MW project in Western Ghats

By Rajiv Shah Is the Narendra Modi government, in its third but what would appear to be a weaker avatar, seeking to show that it would keep a distance, albeit temporarily, from its most favorite business house, the Adanis? It would seem so if the latest move of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) latest to "defer" the Adani Energy’s application for 1500 MW Warasgaon-Warangi Pump Storage Project is any indication.

Bayer's business model: 'Monopoly control over chemicals, seeds'

By Bharat Dogra* The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has rendered a great public service by very recently publishing a report titled ‘Bayer’s Toxic Trails’ which reveals how the German agrochemical giant Bayer has been lobbying hard to promote glyphosate and GMOs, or trying to “capture public policy to pursue its private interests.” This report, written by Joao Camargo and Hans Van Scharen, follows Bayer’s toxic trail as “it maintains monopolistic control of the seed and pesticides markets, fights off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, tries to limit legal liability, and exercises political influence.”

Militants, with ten times number of arms compared to those in J&K, 'roaming freely' in Manipur

By Sandeep Pandey* The violence which shows no sign of abating in the ongoing Meitei-Kuki conflict in Manipur is a matter of concern. The alienation of the two communities and hatred generated for each other is unprecedented. The Meiteis cannot leave Manipur by road because the next district North on the way to Kohima in Nagaland is Kangpokpi, a Kuki dominated area where the young Kuki men and women are guarding the district borders and would not let any Meitei pass through the national highway.

105,000 sign protest petition, allege Nestlé’s 'double standard' over added sugar in baby food

By Kritischer Konsum* 105,000 people have signed a petition calling on Nestlé to stop adding sugar to its baby food products marketed in lower-income countries. It was handed over today at the multinational’s headquarters in Vevey, where the NGOs Public Eye, IBFAN and EKO dumped the symbolic equivalent of 10 million sugar cubes, representing the added sugar consumed each day by babies fed with Cerelac cereals. In Switzerland, such products are sold with no added sugar. The leading baby food corporation must put an end to this harmful double standard.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded reaction in the form of a link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

Can voting truly resolve the Kashmir issue? Past experience suggests optimism may be misplaced

By Raqif Makhdoomi* In the politically charged atmosphere of Jammu and Kashmir, election slogans resonated deeply: "Jail Ka Badla, Vote Sa" (Jail’s Revenge, Vote) and "Article 370 Ka Badla, Vote Sa" (Article 370’s Revenge, Vote). These catchphrases dominated the assembly election campaigns, particularly across Kashmir.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Will Bangladesh go Egypt way, where military ruler is in power for a decade?

By Vijay Prashad* The day after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka, I was on the phone with a friend who had spent some time on the streets that day. He told me about the atmosphere in Dhaka, how people with little previous political experience had joined in the large protests alongside the students—who seemed to be leading the agitation. I asked him about the political infrastructure of the students and about their political orientation. He said that the protests seemed well-organized and that the students had escalated their demands from an end to certain quotas for government jobs to an end to the government of Sheikh Hasina. Even hours before she left the country, it did not seem that this would be the outcome.

Search This Blog