India deserves better than M-O-D-I: Misinformation, Opacity, Distractions, Incompetence
Whether disseminating fake figures, brushing off aviation calamities with words like 'nobody can stop accidents' – as home minister Amit Shah put it after the AI 171 crash – the only thing the Modi government can celebrate after 11 years is how successfully it has mastered the art of refusing to tell the truth. And thereby escape all accountability and responsibility.
Just days earlier, in another shocking tragedy, four were killed and several injured after falling from two local trains in Mumbra in Maharashtra. Around the same time, a BBC News Hindi report found that as many as 82 people died in stampedes at the Kumbh Mela earlier this year, against the official figure of 37. Weeks earlier, it had emerged through the government's own Civil Registration System (CRS) data that official Covid-19 death figures were wrong, and that the actual death toll was at least six times higher . The highest falsification of these figures was in Gujarat, where the Covid mortality rate was 33 times the earlier stated deaths.
In the week when the Bharatiya Janata Party launched a familiar drumbeat to celebrate 11 years in power, the worst aviation tragedy in recent years occurred in Ahmedabad in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat. Over 270 were killed. The country was plunged into grief, outrage, anger, and mourning.
The Modi government does not honour our national motto – Satyamev Jayate (Truth alone must triumph). And here's how I came to that conclusion.
Negligent, unaccountable system
Under high voltage advertising and boastful self-promotion, the government is plagued by the M-O-D-I syndrome—Misinformation, Opacity, Distractions, and Incompetence. After 11 years of M-O-D-I, there is nothing to celebrate.
The government's constant drive for headline management, its pursuit of hype, its industrial-scale disinformation campaigns carried forward by its media and social media armies, and its wall-to-wall projection of Modi as a superhero, are obsessive, fantastical, and delusional.
This frenzied focus on media management and self-aggrandisement has infused a recklessness and shoddiness in all governance systems and institutions. Narendra Modi plays a T-20 version of politics, forever on the lookout for stage event-managed spectacles and well-rehearsed theatrics that grab eyeballs and TV viewership. When the top leader is a media showman focused on photo-ops, the system down the line becomes negligent and unaccountable and is not incentivised to carry out due diligence at any level or pay attention to detail.
The railway ministry seems only focused on media images of the PM flagging off Vande Bharat trains, less concerned with safety and the grim toll of rail accidents that seems to be rising every day. About 244 consequential rail accidents took place between 2017 and 2022.
On 12 June – the very same day of the catastrophic Ahmedabad plane crash – a train running from Delhi to Ghaziabad derailed near Shivaji Bridge station, with its fourth coach falling off the tracks.
The Modi government keeps trumpeting the opening of new airports, yet hundreds of posts in the civil aviation sector lie vacant, depriving crucial areas of aviation of adequately trained staff. Earlier this year, Parliament was told that staffing shortages are particularly acute at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), with nearly 48 per cent of its positions currently vacant. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) are also operating with 37 per cent vacancies, according to official data. According to data shared by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in the Lok Sabha, 814 out of the 1,692 approved posts at the DGCA are vacant.
Once again, M-O-D-I strikes. Despite glitzy airport openings and the media orchestra tom-tomming about privatisation, the civil aviation sector, in reality, is infected with a misinformation, obfuscation, distraction, and incompetence syndrome.
Also read: India's decade of vulnerability needs political unity, not freebies
Dangers of performative politics
The Modi-led government has not told citizens the truth about Covid-related deaths, nor told citizens the truth about fatalities at Kumbh Mela stampedes. Even during Operation Sindoor in May, the government displayed a tendency toward wilful misinformation mixed with deliberate opacity on the gains and losses that India experienced during the conflict with Pakistan.
The constant inclination is not to inform but to mislead, not to educate but to incite, not to enlighten but to confuse. Modi practices politics like performative art, constantly creating dramas that further polarise society, while the television media plays out its own circus where anchors play the role of ringmasters of lies. Bombast and bluster are unleashed 24×7 to supply online armies and their generals with ammunition to attack critics and dissenters. The Opposition is denigrated repeatedly, but an aura of invincibility is created around a prime minister, always photographed from the most flattering angles possible.
When top leaders practice performative politics, when those at the very top do not hesitate to tell lies, this culture of M-O-D-I percolates from the top down to the lowest rungs. Preoccupied with only communicating deliriously fantastical images of Viksit Bharat, and stubbornly refusing to tell the truth, glitzy fakery is in danger of becoming the default mode of this government.
The only achievement that this government can 'celebrate' after 11 years is the unequalled ability to market itself through a captive, irresponsible media and showcase its talent at artful headline management.
In 2016, the Modi government bellowed about demonetisation as a 'master-stroke' against black money. But eight years later, there is every indication that cash is back in the system. There has been no systematic audit on demonetisation's gains and losses. Parliament has still not been told in detail what impact the Covid-related lockdown had on employment and the informal sector, or how many Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) were forced to shut down.
Six years after the ghastly attack in Pulwama in 2019, citizens still don't know who has been held accountable for the deaths of 40 jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). There is no reliable information available on the cases the Enforcement Directorate is pursuing, beyond that many of them are against the Opposition. But given that most ED cases do not lead to convictions, who in the ED is accountable for what prima facie is a vendetta-cum-washing machine campaign against the Opposition?
In times when the ravages of climate change are sweeping across the planet, the prime minister keeps announcing ambitious climate targets at international conferences. But why has Parliament, and the people, still not been properly informed on what steps are being taken to protect the environment and push sustainability forward? The Modi government's campaigns, such as 'Ek ped maa ke naam (plant a tree in the name of your mother)', and claims that the scheme resulted in 80 crore seedlings planted, are hardly enough. Such programmes are like childish playthings, tinkering with names and nursery games instead of putting real, research-based policies in place or disseminating accurate information.
Today, India's GDP numbers have been questioned because of a fog of disinformation on the economy, the latest being the media-hyped headline that India's economy had overtaken Japan's. A more sober assessment would be to also admit that Japan has a per capita income of $33,900 while India's per capita income is a pitiful $2,880. India ranks 143rd in the world in terms of per capita income, while Japan ranks 34th. And it ranks 105th out of 127 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index. No logical explanation either has been given as to why the decennial Census (now slated for 2026) was delayed for six years.
The Modi government was economical with the truth on the Pahalgam terror attack, when the home minister told an all-party meeting that the Baisaran meadow had been opened to tourists without police permission. But it was later revealed that no police permission has ever been needed for Baisaran, and the place is a highly popular tourist spot.
There is still a mystery over India's declining relations with Canada. What has been the Indian government's investigative response to allegations regarding the murder of Canadian Khalistan supporter Hardeep Singh Nijjar? Has India's deep state been engaged in hiring trans-national gangs for extra-judicial 'encounters' that have ruptured foreign relations with 'friendly' Western democracies? We still don't know.
Also read: Modi vs non-BJP CMs: When most popular isn't all-powerful & why Centre-state ties will worsen
Ask no questions
To every question, the answer is the same: ask no questions. If you do ask questions, you'll be dubbed an anti-national by online bullies and the government's vast army of cheerleaders and 'influencers.'
But the simple yet glaring fact is that the Modi government does not tell the truth. It is a hype machine that wants to rule by diktat and arrogantly conveys that it has no respect for the public's right to know.
Interestingly, in a press conference held to mark 11 years of the Modi government, it was BJP President JP Nadda who came out to answer questions. Why? Why should the BJP chief answer on behalf of the government? Why should the prime minister or chief executive not take questions from the media? Are we then surprised that we rank 151/180 in the world press freedom index?
There is a disdainful, shallow and narcissistic condescension in the way Modi turns his back on answering questions either in public or in a press conference.
Modi loves acronyms. But M-O-D-I should become a descriptive term for a non-functional and inefficient government, a government which, for 11 years, has been a regime of Misinformation, Opacity, Distractions, and Incompetence.
Sagarika Ghose is a Rajya Sabha MP, All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
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