EDITORIAL: VIKSIT BHARAT (DEVELOPED INDIA) AND VISHWA GURU (WORLD SAGE): PROPAGANDA AND REALITY
Vinod Mubayi
Two slogans repeated endlessly by Modi regime cohorts, the godi (lapdog) media in India, and Modi himself in recent years are: “Viksit Bharat” (Developed India) by 2047 with a multi-trillion-dollar economy and “Vishwa Guru” (World Sage) that could refer to either Modi or the country, under his rule of course. Events in the last year have thrown doubt on the validity of these slogans.
Several years ago, Modi was reported as boasting that while currently Indians line up before the US Embassy to obtain visas, in future Americans would be lining up before Indian Embassy to get visas to India. Unfortunately, after a whole decade of his rule the reality is very different.
Instead of lining up before the US Embassy, many Indians are now entering the US illegally either through the southern border with Mexico or the northern border with Canada. Over 90,000 Indians entered the US illegally from October last year to September this year according to statistics released by US Customs and Border Patrol. Last year the figure was 96,000. It is estimated that about a third cross from the southern border having entered Mexico through tortuous routes from Nicaragua or other countries in Central America. Crossing from Canada is also hazardous as some drowned in the St. Lawrence River while others crossing the land border in winter got lost and froze to death. Statistics also reveal that Indians constitute the third largest number of illegal migrants into the US behind Mexico and El Salvador and may become the largest sometime in the future if present trends continue.
It is also revealing that about half of the illegal migrants come from the state of Gujarat, products no doubt of the highly touted and advertised Gujarat model of development pioneered and implemented by Narendra Modi when he was the state’s chief minister for well over a decade. What is also particularly notable is that these migrants striving to enter the US illegally are by no means the poorest of their country. In order to embark on the venture of sneaking into the US they have to come up with thousands of dollars (many lakhs of rupees) to pay off the multitude of crooked agents needed to facilitate their journey. So, obviously, these are people with access to enough assets like land or other property that they can sell or mortgage to generate the cash required and the question is why are such people willing to risk all they have on a dangerous and illegal journey that could conceivably end in their death or in their incarceration and deportation back to their homeland.
In the view of Prof. Ashoka Mody, professor of economics at Princeton University, the lack of stable, regular employment is the principal driver of illegal migration out of India. He says “the impulse driving Indian migration is likely to intensify, especially as the working-age population grows and job opportunities remain constrained.” Mody points out that “the vast dimensions of India’s longstanding problem with joblessness are best captured in one statistic. Over the last five years, 70 million Indians have sought work in the deeply unproductive segments of Indian agriculture.” Mody labels this “a cataclysmic regression” as a “a healthy developing economy – particularly one with shiny digital and physical infrastructure – should experience a sharp decline in the agricultural workforce and an increase in modern industrial and service jobs.” Instead of a healthy growth, “the Indian economy generates too few industrial or urban jobs. Outside of agriculture, the limited opportunities are in financially (and often physically) precarious construction and low-end service roles such as street vendors, housekeepers, security guards, and drivers.” Mody indicates that the largest number of illegal migrants come from the farm sectors of Punjab and Gujarat and belong to what might be described as the lower middle class, those who “possess a financial cushion today [but] are, not unreasonably, worried about the future for themselves and their children. They prefer to sell their land or other assets, and borrow from friends and moneylenders to leave while they can. So desperate are they to get out, they are willing to risk their lives on illegal ‘donkey routes’.”
As long as the lack of employment continues to plague the Indian economy and neither the private, corporate sector nor the government are able to come up with a solution, the spectacle of desperate people migrating illegally on “donkey routes” will keep on happening for the foreseeable future. Hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing their homeland in search of a decent livelihood is hardly evidence of a Viksit Bharat despite whatever tall talk Modi or the godi media indulge in. Moreover, very recent consumption data in the Indian economy suggest that the Indian middle-class is shrinking and the Indian economy is experiencing what economists call a K-shaped growth where a small number of people in the upper classes are doing extremely well while the majority is facing a decline.
If Viksit Bharat is a dud, what about Vishwa Guru? Apart from some inane statements about India being on the side of “peace” when Modi went to Ukraine and Russia, which were dutifully reported in the godi media to burnish Modi’s image as a Vishwa Guru, recent headlines in the international media have focused instead on the activities of Indian intelligence agencies and their agents implementing assassination plots against assorted members of the Indian diaspora in Canada and the US. The targets of these actions appear to be those in the Indian diaspora who have incurred the wrath of the Indian regime for various reasons such as espousing causes that are anathema to the Indian govt or publicly expressing criticism of the Modi regime.
What has been revealed so far in the US and Canada is that the killing in June 2023 of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a priest of a gurudwara (Sikh Temple) in Surrey, British Columbia and a Khalistani activist, and a plot to murder another Khalistan activist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York City, were both planned and orchestrated by agents of the Indian government and the plot apparently reached very high levels in the Indian government. In the plot against Pannun, the US Department of Justice has indicted an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, who is currently in US custody, and an agent of RAW, India’s equivalent of the CIA, identified as Vikash Yadav, who is presumed to be in India. The indictment, which contains detailed accounts of conversations between Yadav and Gupta and Gupta and a presumed “hit-man”, who eventually turned out to be an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, also ties these Indian agents to the killing of Nijjar in Canada.
The Modi regime reacted very indignantly to the charges made by the Canadian government that led to the expulsion of six Indian diplomats from Canada and the reciprocal expulsion of Canadian diplomats from India but remained relatively quiet and restrained on the US indictment, promising cooperation and sending a team to discuss matters with US authorities. While this reflects undoubtedly the difference in global power status between the US hegemon and Canada, what it fails to take into account is the fact that the charges made by Canadian authorities are very likely based on intelligence gained by the vast US intelligence network and shared with Canada. These charges will, in all probability, be authenticated in open court once the trial of the men charged in the plots begins and cause further international embarrassment to the Indian government when the Vishwa Guru is widely perceived to have morphed into a Vishwa Rambo instead. Moreover, the same impact is going to be felt as a result of the recent charges by Canadian authorities that Home Minister Amit Shah, the No. 2 person in the Indian government, was “involved” in the assassination plots as well as the revelations about the use of criminal members of the Punjab-based Lawrence Bishnoi gang by Indian agencies in the Nijjar killing. Amit Shah’s “involvement” in murder plots should not come as a complete surprise if one recalls that a little over a decade ago, he was in jail in India charged by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation CBI (equivalent to America’s FBI) of having orchestrated several murders in Gujarat when he was the state’s Home Minister under Modi. He was somewhat mysteriously released and exonerated after Modi came to power as India’s Prime Minister in 2014.
A question that arises at this stage and deserves some analysis if not a complete answer is: Why is the Modi regime sending agents to plot assassinations of Khalistani activists in the Sikh diaspora in US and Canada when the movement for Khalistan (an independent Sikh state to be carved out of Punjab) has itself dwindled to negligible levels in India? The fact that such plots are not a figment of imagination but quite real is attested to by the warnings FBI agents have been known to have given to several potential victims of such plots to be cautious and take measures to protect themselves. It appears that the Modi regime’s attempts to even physically eliminate its opponents and critics among segments of the Indian diaspora is to demonstrate to the Indian public its muscular and forceful approach to safeguarding India from its perceived “anti-national” enemies. This muscularity and projection of strength through violence was advocated and promoted by the ideologues of Hindutva like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and stands in stark contrast to the ideal of ahimsa (non-violence) championed by Mahatma Gandhi. It is well-known that the current Hindu nationalist leadership of the ruling BJP abhors Gandhi’s ideals while trying to opportunistically bask in his aura and putting his portrait on Indian banknotes.
While it is difficult to predict what political twists and turns the uncovering by law enforcement agencies in North America of assassination plots against US and Canadian citizens might take in future, the image of India as a Vishwa Guru assiduously promoted by the Modi regime is not likely to survive these revelations.
Top - Home