New Delhi: For a government that is obsessed with controlling the political narrative, the last four weeks have been disastrous. The Narendra Modi government has had to contend with allegations and claims made by venerable personalities that have made the ruling establishment look weak and vulnerable – a state of being that hits at the very core of the muscular-nationalist perception that the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has so carefully engineered and cultivated. Worse, the government has struggled to provide convincing answers to any of these allegations; its conspicuous silence has been seen more as evasion than the smugness that this government is well-known for. The now viral video of the Leader of the Opposition outside parliament, asking two Union ministers to “come on, let us do it (address media) together” and they ending up rushing away was the image of the day. The two ministers, Prahlad Joshi and Ashwini Vaishnaw leaving hurriedly and looking very frazzled, with a smiling Rahul Gandhi urging them to “come together” before waiting TV cameras told a story that the government in Delhi has so far never allowed to be told. Control of photo-ops and a dominant social media game combined with most sections of big media kowtowing to the regime’s line has provided the Modi government a fire exit even when difficult questions have been posed to the government in the past.But now feels different.The damage began when the Epstein files exposed the quiet but firm links of the Modi government with the now infamous sexual offender and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The tranche of documents released by the US Department of Justice showed revealing connections of Epstein with Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who later said that the series of meetings between the two was part of an institutional interaction related to the International Peace Institute. However, industrialist Anil Ambani, who was widely considered Modi’s acolyte after having landed the contract to maintain Rafale fighter jet, has had a series of personal exchanges with Epstein and appears to be familiar with the latter’s sexual offences, according to documents. But all hell broke loose when in one of Epstein’s 2017 emails, he claimed that none other than Prime Minister Modi himself took advice from him to entertain US President Donald Trump in Israel. Epstein, in the alleged email, says that Modi danced and sang to please Trump and “it worked”. While the opposition termed the mention of the prime minister as a “national shame”, the only response that the Modi government has was to dismiss the allegation as baseless and as “trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal”. Hardeep Puri’s press conference in the party office today, after strenuous denials of “trashy ruminations”, saying on camera that he had met Epstein “4-5 times” showed that the pressure was on the government for coming clean on a scandal that has rocked the world. Also Read: New Epstein Files Show Multiple Email Exchanges With Hardeep Puri, ‘Was Making Case for Digital India’, He SaysThe matter had barely receded on social media that the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi aimed at him with former Army chief M.M. Naravane’s claim in his memoirs that he was handed a “hot potato” during the India-China Galwan 2020 clash. In his yet to be made public memoirs, Naravane claims that although he alerted the top ministers of the union government about Chinese troops advancing towards India, he wasn’t instructed in a timely manner about how he should respond to the aggression. This, despite the fact that he had categorically been told before that he should not take any action without informing the government in case such an aggression happens from the Chinese side. Eventually, after much to and fro, Naravane said that he was only instructed to do what he thought was fit. “Jo Uchit Samjho, Woh Karo,” Naravane wrote as being told by Union defence minister Rajnath Singh after the latter spoke with the prime minister. The controversy snowballed into a big clash in the parliament between the ruling party MPs and the opposition. The government, on its part, made a tactical blunder by raising doubts about The Caravan article by Sushant Singh that first published excerpts from General Naravane’s book. Both Union home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh rose in the Lok Sabha to stop Gandhi from speaking, claiming that the magazine piece could not be believed as there is no published source or book to back the claims in the article. As it turned out, Gandhi not only brought a copy of the book to the parliament but flashed it in front of the media and even read out the portions that the government clearly seemed to be uncomfortable with. The Indian Express carried a story that out of the 35 books on defence that the ministry cleared, only Naravane’s book had been withheld, solidifying the impression that the government clearly was attempting to prevent the publication of the book written by the former Army chief. Within hours, both digital copies of the paywalled Caravan piece and Naravane’s book were widely circulated on phones and emails, further embarrassing the government. The government’s discomfort became even more clear when the Delhi Police, which functions under the Union home ministry, took a suo motu notice of the unlawful circulation of Naravane’s book and registered an FIR against unknown persons for circulating an unauthorised book. The government’s radio silence both in the parliament and outside, while making unforeseen efforts to prevent the book’s circulation, the opposition seemed ahead of the government in guiding the political narrative. After what was widely considered an unremarkable budget, the government had to deal with further embarrassment when US president Trump, not the Modi government, announced the India-US trade deal that reversed tariffs from 50% to 18%. However, Trump’s move to announce the deal before the Indian government could do so was widely seen as a part of a series of India-related announcements that he has been making, right from the time when he declared a ceasefire between India and Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.Since then, the government has been largely opaque about the deal, while the media has been gleaning information from the White House documents and other US’s executive orders that have claimed to penalise India with a 25% penalty if it chooses to buy Russian oil in the future. Details regarding the deal kept tumbling out, and most experts see the trade negotiations as a much better deal for the US than India that appears to have opened up US imports in crucial domestic sectors that may affect Indian farmers, small and medium businesses, and dairy sectors drastically in the long-run.Such has been the confusion in the government’s ranks that the Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal, who was appointed to control the damage emerging out of poor India-US deal’s optics, became a meme on social media after he directed media questions about possibility of buying Russia oil to his MEA counterpart S. Jaishankar. Jaishankar, on the other hand, passed the same questions to Goyal while resisting a response – a phenomenon that Congress MP Shashi Tharoor characterised as “ping-pong” between government’s ministers. Modi, for the first time as the prime minister, could not make his Lok Sabha speech in the Motion of Thanks debate amidst opposition’s hue and cry. Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla came to his defence and claimed that he had urged the prime minister not to come to the Lok Sabha as opposition’s actions could not be predicted. The prime minister eventually made a nearly two hour speech in the upper house but remained strangely silent on the controversies that had plagued the government’s narrative, even while aiming to target ruling opposition parties in poll-bound states. For a government that is centred around the larger-than-life perception of the prime minister – akin to a 56-inched chest Vishwaguru – political developments over the last month have made him look smaller and powerless in front of big powers like the US and China. Opposition has ensured to amplify the narrative that the Modi government, in spite of its muscular claims, has come a cropper in the current trade wars. As if such a visible unease in the government ranks wasn’t enough, Modi’s own camp have decided to take an aim at him. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat chose the moment to assert RSS’s supremacy over the BJP and revived the 75-year retirement jab at Modi in his latest speech during an event marking the centenary celebrations of the organisation. “…acche din did not come because of the BJP, actually it is the other way round…our acche din came from our hard work…. We remained committed to Ram Mandir construction. Those who supported us benefitted,” Bhagwat said. The comment came on the heels of the so-called “upper caste” groups’ pan-India agitations against the government’s UGC guidelines against caste discrimination. A number of people and groups, considered to be die-hard supporters of Modi, targeted the Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan for giving his stamp on the UGC guidelines that they believed were discriminatory towards “upper’ castes. The government’s steadfast refusal to answer pertinent questions and address the growing unease signal a sort of discomfort that is of its own making. Developments over the last month show that while the government may be adept at controlling the political narrative with its great organisational strength, it may not be immune to increasingly unpredictable external factors at play currently.