Fasgaya – Changes that have happened in the last 5 years that did not happen in the last 60 years.

29 MARCH 2019

  

Changes within India, contd.:

Emergence of A thoroughly negative opposition that uses lies, irrelevant points and even indecent language in debates in an attempt to mislead and instigate people:

Arun Jaitley in a recent blog says:

“It is a recognition of the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government that Opposition, after five years, has no real issue against the Government. The Government is contesting on a pro-incumbency performance platform. It is a Government with a leader with whom the comfort level of the voter is high. The Opposition is in a state of panic. It’s single point programme is a negative one - ‘remove one man’. The level of ambition is limited. In the absence of any real issue against the Government, Rahul Gandhi has led not only his party but the entire Opposition to rely on fake and manufactured issues. They raise fake issues, create an echo effect and then believe their falsehood to be true.”

Whether what Arun Jaitley opines is right or wrong, one thing is clear: The Opposition is unable to find an issue that would attract, leave alone grip, the attention of the common man. This is frustrating for the opposition, frustrating to no end. In such a situation they could have taken one of the following two approaches:

1. Be a constructive opposition: Appreciate the Govt. where it does good for the people and the Nation and if possible, suggest a better solution than what the Govt. is implementing for peoples’ and country’s good. Criticize if it does something that hurts people or the country in the short or long term, tangibly or intangibly and do not stop with just criticizing but give a better alternative, a clear road-map to the better alternative. Publish your stand so people know what you are thinking, saying and doing.

Or

2. Be a negative opposition: Oppose for opposing sake. Criticize what the Govt. does even if it is good for the people at large and for the Nation. In this process, befriend all your enemies as well if they all agree to oppose for opposing sake. Such an approach would necessarily make the opposition a personality- oriented one and not an issue- oriented opposition. Such an opposition attacks personalities and their focus shifts from issues of importance to the common man and the Nation to personal attacks on a few people – even though these people have done good to people and the country at large and so are liked by people. This makes the opposition blind to ground realities. Even if they see or hear ground realities, they turn a blind eye to them and see, even in the obvious things, only what they want to see i.e. venues for attacking the few chosen personalities.

In this option there will only be criticism of the few chosen people and not anything that helps the people or the Nation. Even if it is directed at issues, the negative opposition never gives a road map or an alternative suggestion as to how the issue should be solved better or how the Govt. could have done better: the negative opposition thinks ‘simply say what is done is ridiculous!’ Even our docile press does not ask a simple question to such a person: ‘Sir, what according to you should have been done?’. Worse still, normally such people whose end result is a few people, cannot come out with anything better, leave alone a road map that is superior to achieve the same objective or even how the very objective could have been even better. In fact, they cannot come out with a better goal or vision and also cannot have a road map even for the objective the ruling party has chosen as they are blinded by these few people to be fixed. So, the only thing they are forced to do is to twist the facts to suit the criticism on the few people the opposition has chosen to criticise. This means creating and propagating a bundle of lies and propagating it to people so intensely and repeatedly with the hope that at least some may start taking these lies as truth and believing them. Let the propaganda be done thru paid media and owners of such media, it does not matter. Also employ spokespersons whose job it is to defend the party whether what the party says is good or bad for the people or the Nation. But even these spokespersons know what they are talking is not true, not from their heart and so there is disconnect within themselves and they lack the moral courage to speak authentically whatever they are forced to. Lack of authenticity is seen in their body language. Even getting a logical coherence to prove the point they are making becomes a problem for most of them.

But we live in times when even lies have to sound reasonable for which we have to give factual data to back up the lie. Here comes the problem: An accusation without any facts to back it up is a mere lie and not to be taken seriously at all. Even a common man in India knows this today and so this is not going to work at all. After all we are not 1938/39 Germany to repeat what Hitler did and hope what worked for Hitler in 38/39would work today as well in India, a relatively mature democracy as it stands today. Sure, it works for a very short time and it creates something like an earthquake effect even now, but it vanishes over long term doing enormous damage to those who started the false propaganda.

Unfortunately, our opposition chose the second option: Obviously this is not working and that is why the utter frustration which the opposition hopes to counter with more such accusations without back up and therefore more they fail. Many times, they run out of creative thinking, cannot create new lies and are forced to come out with the same old issues that have been proven by even courts as false accusations without any basis. The bundle of lies unleashed by the opposition has reached such horrendous proportions that whatever they tell is taken as a lie first by the common citizen! So even the short- term quake effect has been eroded over a period of time. This is exactly what is happening to the opposition in India currently. You can see this happening in every political debate in the country.

This is unfortunate because a democracy needs a strong, positive opposition for it to function effectively and In India today there is no opposition worth the name.

Robert Ringer, the American icon, summarizes what he calls the ‘Ten Dirty Tricks of Debating, the most commonly used tools of the incurable debater’ in one of his famous blogs. I am listing below some of them where our great democratic opposition in India fits in like a bullet:

“Dirty Trick No. 1: The False Premise

Basing one’s argument on a false premise is one of the oldest tricks of clever debaters. It’s a mainstay of most political debates, wherein politicians find they can slide a false premise by sitcom-damaged brains without much effort. Worse, supposedly opposing parties begin most of their debates with joint false premises, thus giving viewers all the more reason to assume that such premises are correct.”

I was trying to list some of those events that happened in our country using false premise as the basis for allegation: these have been proved utterly false subsequently, though at the time they were happening many thought or brainwashed to think – even by the media- these were true:

-PM faked his education certificate- a two year old story proved false but has resurfaced now- just prior to elections.

- Loya conspiracy.

- Semen balloons.

- Church attacks.

Junaid beef angle.

Kathua "apologists".

Reservations ended!

SC/ST Atrocities Act ended!

No tax benefits of demonetization.

Bank deposit panic

NDA created NPAs.

Surgical strikes are fake.

In Balakot, Pak our ‘valiant’ air force hit trees and not terrorists.’

Even the ones that are not totally false are not totally true either, like GST, demonetization etc. Some positives and negatives are present in these but only the negatives are chosen, talked about and harped on, telling a whole lot of lies in the process of proving the negatives right.

To be contd.: