V.S. Naipaul once quipped, “India means the world, in a way. People live in several worlds at the same time.” This may sound crude to many critics of India, who have been trying to ride on an iron-clad image of the BJP government through their Goblessian pronouncements, thus stoking and promoting the unfinished business of Partition, nonetheless, Naipaul’s is a telling articulation of the bundle of contradictions that undergird India. That is to say, to understand India, would be to swallow multiple worlds.
It is another matter that the Opposition in India do not understand this simple point. No matter how badly the Opposition and critics may slam, sledge, and try to ostracise Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over the election debacle of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, it would be an intellectual feebleness, even suicidal, to singularly view the result of the 18th Lok Sabha, 2024 election, as a barometer of his creditability or the delegitimisation of the Yogi model of development. A point can be made that the election results may be an indication that excessive polarisation, convincingly demonstrated by almost all parties in India, can only lead to virtue-signalling gestures rather than converting into votes for all of them, but that is precisely the reason why the Yogi model is still needed in Uttar Pradesh.
What this election result signifies is that people have evaded the scrutiny of religion, opting mostly for development, modernisation, employment, and inclusiveness. While compartmentalisation of communities cannot be entirely rejected, it is also understood that people in Uttar Pradesh are looking for cross-fertilisation of ideas/ideologies that can fortify their living standard in quotidian life, thus making the implicit hint that communities may be tacit to be (mis)used as election cannon fodder by political parties.
The implication of this shift is already obvious with CM Yogi strictly asking his cabinet ministers, in the wake of the election outcome, to deter from practising “VIP culture” and instead promote the practice of “samvaad (dialogue), samanvay (coordination), samvedansheelta (sensitivity).” The mantra is simple if only they are willing to listen. The Yogi model has been the model of communication, interaction, dignity, and development. It has always been like that since its inception in 2017. In fact, CM Yogi’s efforts to stabilise people’s lives can be gauged from the fact that “in the last six and a half years, more than 55 lakh underprivileged people in the state received free housing facilities under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and Mukhyamantri Awas Yojana.”
Those who cast doubt over the inevitability of Yogi in Uttar Pradesh discount the fact that in his tenure as CM, Yogi has bulldozed the aspirations of criminals, which for so long existed in the state both as a reality and anecdotal evidence. The fact that not many would like to present is that Yogi triggered “68K ‘encroachments’ [with] Rs 844-crore property seized.” These seized lands have been converted into living houses that the Yogi government has provided to the marginalised section of society in the state. That hue and cry over his bulldozer image is, therefore, a diversion tactic by his opponents.
It is a strange paradox that those who cry about democratic backsliding and its failure in Uttar Pradesh, whenever Yogi takes strict actions against criminals, do so only due to their inherited character of loot and corruption, something with which the state has become a synonym for so long. The hypocrisy of these experts on democracy is not only acute but also detrimental to the progress of Uttar Pradesh. It is not rocket science to understand that any state can make economic progress only when it ensures a firm grip on the law-and-order situation. By the same equation, it is not difficult to understand who is afraid of strict laws and actions.
In Yogi lies the answer to Uttar Pradesh’s future. No wonder, he has managed to attract so many investors to the state, which his predecessors failed to do. Under his leadership, Uttar Pradesh’s development is no longer a fairy tale but it has become a comprehensible reality, which is reflected in the fact that “Uttar Pradesh is contributing 9.2 per cent to the national income. Today, Uttar Pradesh is becoming the growth engine of the country’s development as the second largest economy of the country.”
In 2021-22, the total GDP of the state was Rs 16.45 lakh crore, which increased to more than Rs 25.48 lakh crore in 2023-24. With eyes set on gaining a $1 trillion economy in his second term as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath means business. In this battle for the state’s progress and regeneration, let us hope that citizens won’t surrender to any abominable rhetoric by critics and the Opposition to defame his rising popularity and mass adulation.
The author is a literary critic and columnist. He tweets @opdwivedi82. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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