Preparations are afoot for a fortnight-long orgy of self-praise, self-congratulations and a heavy doze of boasting as Narendra Modi completes yet another year in his prime ministerial innings. The fizz has definitely gone out of the Modi project, but the ingrained habits of loudly blowing the Hindutva trumpet do not allow for any reality check.But a reality check is way overdue and it produces a grim picture: India’s Hindus (and other non-Muslims), have also been paying a heavy price for a decade of trenchant Hindutva. The Muslims have reconciled themselves to licking their wounds but a very heavy cost is being extracted from the majority (i.e. the Hindus). And, the phenomenon of the Cockroach Janata Party can only be understood as the revolt of this majority for the price they find themselves having to pay for a decade of shabby governance.Like an exceptionally brilliant demagogue, prime minister Modi has, since 2014, been making grand promises and, more often than not, failed spectacularly in delivering on those tantalising dreams. Delivery is confined to glossy advertisements.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.It is part of the authoritarian playbook to blame predecessors for present difficulties and imperfections; but after 12 years of unchallenged rule, no king or dictator or autocrat can escape the onus of accountability for underperformance, colossal incompetence or organised corruption.All these years, the Modi regime seems to have proceeded and prospered on an assumption that it need not attend to the tenets of good governance because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have the backing of the majority community. The majority community is tricked into voting for Hindutva candidates.Elections normally produce ‘mandates’ and an obligation to produce good governance. But under Modi, the working mantra has been that as long as the Hindutva warriors went about their business of “protecting the Hindus” from unending “dangers,” the regime was free to indulge the emperor in his whims and fancies. The result is there for one and all to see: India – read: its Hindu majority – is groaning under the weight of a personality cult and its concurrent maladies.It should be obvious that India’s Muslims cannot possibly be held responsible for 12 years of maladministration and incompetence in our national endeavors. This is because, as has been so well-documented, the BJP has excluded Muslims from its ranks. There is no Muslim member in the cabinet; the top echelons of administration (especially the so-called sensitive areas) are practically devoid of any Muslim officers of the All India Services like the IAS, the IPS and the Foreign Service. The corporate manors are lorded over by non-Muslims. There is no area of national activity where the Hindus do not dominate or do not dictate. The Muslims are no longer “appeased.” There are no official iftar parties at Hyderabad House. The Muslims have been air-brushed out of the national picture-postcard.So, the buck cannot be passed on to the “enemies of the Hindus”. The mess is entirely that of the saffron camp, with its distinct Hindutva characteristics. Take the case of mismanagement and mishandling of the economy. The finance minister may claim that the global economic situation is “not of our making” but as the custodian of the (self-proclaimed) third largest economy in the world, she failed to protect Indians (read: mostly Hindus) from extensive and continuing pain. It is not that the Hindutva crowd has yet devised a mechanism (a kind of reverse jaziya ) whereby the Hindus pay less than the Muslims at the petrol pump. The bottom-line: it is the Hindu administrators who are messing up the economy and the victims of their incompetence predominantly are also primarily the Hindus. Inflation is religion-neutral.Or, take the case of examination paper leaks in national test after test. These leaks take place because of organised greed, entrenched corruption, inefficiency and shoddy supervision. Who suffers when examinations are cancelled? Millions of aspiring Indian students, predominantly from Hindu families. And, who are these incompetent overseers of India’s examination and broken-down education system? To a man, all Hindus. But perhaps these inconveniences and broken dreams and wasted years are a small price to pay for having a Hindutva regime, which remains ever vigilant against “dangers” to the Hindus.Or, take the case of crony capitalists being allowed to hijack the energy sector. Just half-a-dozen “entrepreneurs – none of them Muslim – keep making windfall profits at the expense of millions of consumers (mostly Hindus) and no one is allowed to raise a voice in protest. And, when every respected economist is underscoring the need for “reforms,” surely the Muslims cannot be castigated for holding up the necessary policy changes.Or, take the case of millions of unemployed youths – predominantly Hindus, all staunch nationalist, all “Modi bhakts”, all subscribers to the catechism of Hindu-Muslim enmity – and, all without a job. Unemployment on this industrial scale cannot be blamed on the Muslims.The leitmotif gets replicated in city after city; if there is water crisis or a power breakdown, the sufferers are predominantly Hindus and the perpetrators are almost exclusively Hindus. The Hindutva crowd remains gloriously indifferent to the breakdown of civic governance.Not only that, the Hindutva managers have cunningly perfected the game: how to keep the Hindus scared, anxious, and on edge. Prime minister Modi remains the principal executioner of the ‘scare-the-Hindus’ game. Only the other day, at the Somnath temple ceremony, he was warning that the forces of “appeasement” were still out there – even after a decade of Hindutva supremacy. And, then we have the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh graphically warning the majority ‘batto ge, to katto ge.’ That you will be slaughtered if you allow yourselves to be divided. Brutal talk.And its not just the major political personalities who are busy stoking the embers of fear, there is an organised and empowered cottage-industry inventing fearsome images of ‘jihad’. We not only have the bogey of ‘love jihad,’ there are also war cries of ‘fertiliser jihad’ ‘drug jihad’ and even ‘corporate jihad.’ An ‘enemy’ round every corner.So, as the Modi regime gets ready to celebrate another anniversary, the influential middle classes (predominantly Hindus) are beginning to take a hard-look at the Hindutva crowd’s extravagant claims of achievements and accomplishments. It will be fascinating to watch how the dense dirt of incompetence and misgovernance gets swept under the Hindutva carpet. Jai Shri Ram.Harish Khare was editor-in-chief of The Tribune.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.