New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, February 9, took off where he left in the Lok Sabha a day earlier. In the Upper House, he not only repeated his claims on improved governance in an ad hominem attack on the opposition but also concertedly stayed away from addressing any of the concerns raised on his alleged relationship with the Adani Group, currently in controversy over allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud.In what could still appear to be a circuitous response to the Adani controversy, he accused the opposition ranks of putting India’s economic health in jeopardy by construing controversies for political gains.“In a democracy, there could be differences, arguments between political parties. But please do not play with the nation’s economic health to suit your political interests,” the prime minister said towards the very end of his speech. The comment, which was more directed towards the general public instead of the opposition, in a televised environment, drew great applause from the treasury benches which occasionally lapsed into chants of “Modi, Modi”.The opposition, too, didn’t let his nearly 90-minute speech be smooth sailing. In rather dramatic heckling, opposition members kept raising slogans like “Modi-Adani bhai bhai (Modi-Adani brothers-in-arms)”, or “Band karo yeh jhootha bhashan (Stop the lie-peddling speech)” and clamoured for a joint parliamentary committee probe, even as Sansad TV cameras never panned towards their benches.In contrast, the National Democratic Alliance’s members were shown constantly as Modi spoke.Targets Mallikarjun KhargeLike in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Modi took specific aim only at the Congress, even as nearly all opposition parties protested against his alleged association with the Adani Group. If it was Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, he targeted Mallikarjun Kharge, the Congress president, who is also the leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha.Responding to Kharge’s recent speech in which he attempted to equate the Bharatiya Janata Party as a ‘Brahminical force’, Modi said that it was the BJP which ensured social justice by working for the most marginalised people including the Adivasis and Dalits, who, according to him, were left in the lurch in the years preceding 2014.“Kharge ji, let me cite the example of your own state Karnataka. Nearly 1.70 crore people have access to Jan Dhan accounts. In your own (district) Kalaburagi, more than eight lakh Jan Dhan accounts have been opened. I can understand your pain. So much empowerment has been done in my government that your account books have closed,” he said, adding that people of Kharge’s constituency defeated him and replaced him with another Dalit candidate because of such policy decisions and hard work by his government.Congress MP Mallikarjun Kharge speaks in the Rajya Sabha. Photo: PTI/FileHe said that while the Congress merely took “tokentistic” measures to alleviate the pains of the poor, his government was looking to find “permanent solutions”, citing comparative figures between his government’s tenure and years before it on drinking water supply, irrigated land, electricity supply, LPG connections, and sanitary facilities. He also claimed that his Kisan Samman Nidhi, a direct cash transfer scheme, has benefitted 80% of India’s farmers who own around 1-2 acres of farms, even as he claimed to have taken long strides in technological progress, digital transactions, and infrastructure development.He also spoke about a huge jump in the budgetary allocations on the welfare of Adivasis, Dalits, and OBCs. All the figures he mentioned to back his claims were, however, absolute numbers that may not reflect the actual proportion of beneficiaries or budgetary allocations.Curiously, he claimed that “eight crore families” became beneficiaries of his government’s Nal Se Jal scheme (drinking water on tap) in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, while in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, he claimed that “11 crore homes” have received drinking water on tap in his government. The Wire couldn’t independently verify which of these was correct.He claimed that the overall growth in every sector because of his policies has created possibilities of greater employment, in what seemed to be a response to the opposition’s campaign against India’s unprecedentedly high unemployment rate at the moment.Projecting his government as “pro-poor”, he claimed that the principle of “saturation” dictates all his policies, which is a desire to ensure that his welfare programmes reaches each and every beneficiary.He said that the governance of saturation is “true secularism” that will possibly end the “politics of appeasement” in which political parties allegedly preferred one religious or caste group over another in delivering welfare.Flags misuse of Article 356 by Indira GandhiThroughout his speech, the prime minister compared his government with the Congress regimes, citing instances in which the Congress allegedly violated democratic principles like federalism. He hit out at the critics by saying that all those who believe that his government doesn’t respect federalism should know that Article 356 (President’s rule) was imposed “90 times” by the Congress, out of which 50 were during Indira Gandhi’s tenure.In contrast, he said, he has taken care to give proper respect to India’s heroes like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Param Veer Chakra awardees by naming the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after them. At the same time, he took a dig at Rahul Gandhi for not using Nehru’s surname. “Our country is not a private property of one dynasty,” he said.He dramatically ended his speech by invoking his nationalist credentials. “Desh dekh raha hai kaise ek akela kitnon par bhaari pad raha hai. Aisa hausla mere conviction ki wajah se hai. Arey desh ke liye jeeta hoon. (The nation is watching how one person is proving to be stronger than so many. My courage is because of my conviction. I live for my country,” Modi said as he pumped his chest, pointing at the opposition benches.The prime minister’s first two speeches are only a sign of what is in store ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In more than three hours of speaking, Modi chose not to answer any of the questions raised by the opposition. Like his previous speeches, even this one was directed towards a television audience instead of the opposition, brazening out the allegations against his government with a heavy dose of self-glorification, nationalism, and demonisation of critics and criticisms.
