Arun Shourie, a Former Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the Vajpayee Ministry (1998–2004) and also a winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982 and a man honoured by the country by giving Padma Bhushan in 1990 doesn’t seem too impressed with the present Modi Goverment. Speaking to a packed audience at The Wire Dialogues on Saturday, Shourie, who was interviewed on stage by Karan Thapar, explains exactly what needs to be done to ensure that Modi is not going to come back into power.
The former BJP minister said that the opposition parties must pledge to ensure they put up one common candidate against the BJP in every constituency. He thinks that it is a myth to believe that Modi is such a popular leader.
“So people ask, can it be Rahul Gandhi, can it be Mamata Banerjee but they forget to ask who the alternative to Indira Gandhi was in 1977. Was it Jagjivan Ram? H.N. Bahuguna? Morarji? Charan Singh?” Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who died last month, has been compared by many to Jawaharlal Nehru, said Shourie. “So who was the alternative to Vajpayee in 2004? Was it Sonia Gandhi? Was it Manmohan Singh, who was hidden behind a curtain? Yet the BJP lost that election.” He then quoted the former prime minister Chandrashekhar as saying, “The people have a way of solving problems that leaders are unable to do. And when the people strike, they don’t just slap, they deliver a body blow.”
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“So forget the past … This is a new situation. Realise it is not just the country that is in peril. You are personally in peril. Each one of these opposition leaders, Modi will finish them the moment he will use them, and this is especially meant for Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik … So forget the past, don’t stand on ceremony. I would say forget the future too – the question of how I can ally with a party today against whom I will have to fight an assembly election tomorrow.”
Shourie warned, “Please understand, that election will never come if you lose this election. This is the last chance for stopping this onslaught. If we lose this chance in 2019 because of such considerations, my friend, don’t expect fair elections after that.”
“The opposition need to remember two numbers, 31-69 and 60-90”, said Shourie: “Thirty-one percent was the vote share Modi polled at the height of his popularity in 2014 and he is today less popular than he was then. So the opposition’s starting number is 69% of the vote.”
Shourie said the Modi-Shah duo will be looking to deflect people’s attention from real issues in the run-up to 2019 elections. “The recent arrests of five activists”, he thought, was a case in point. “This is the Gujarat model”, he said while alleging that from 2002-2014, the Gujarat police too claimed multiple times that Modi could be assassinated. He said such a tactic was advanced by the duo with elections in mind.”
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