The Non Resident Prime Minister
Man on a (foreign) mission.
Aadhaar — the national biometric ID card for all people who have resided for 182 days or more in India could well be denied to Shri Narendra Modi given that he spends so much of time out of India. That’s an exaggeration of course, but seriously, isn’t so much foreign travel an overkill given that the country is facing serious problems internally?
The Prime Minister completed three years in power recently. Among all the criticism that he has faced for his policies such as division of civil society on religious grounds, derailing the economy due to demonetization, ruining institutions of international repute, vote rigging, pushing through surveillance regime through a national biometric ID card etc one thing stands out:
His penchant for foreign travel.
The number of countries visited, the frequent flyer miles he has logged, the cost to the exchequer (taxpayers), the number of business tycoons he has met, the number of deals and agreements he has signed (many of which are yet to see the light of day) are all very well documented and are part of history — and ridicule.
Media has left no stone unturned to glorify the trips. And where the media was found wanting, information was gained through Right to Information (RTI) route — particularly the cost and time spent on these visits - which the media is unusually shy to report.
My intent is not to quantify all these costs (that information is just a Google away) Besides, can the number of man days spent on these trips be realistically be calculated?
It is not just the PM who wastes (err spends) his time. An whole army of government staff is pressed into preparing for the trips and ensuring it’s ‘success’. From top bureaucrats, lowly civil servants and from airline crews to diplomatic missions, everybody spends considerable time, effort, money on these trips.
Modi could have been excused for all these extravagant showings. After all, here was a poor man who had been steadfastly denied the US Visa for years because all these years America had stoutly believed Modi was behind genocide in the state of Gujarat in the year 2002. He was the chief minister of the state then. For a Gujarati and to be denied a US Visa is a matter of abject shame — and I am of the considered opinion that Modi tried his best to become PM ONLY to get a diplomatic passport and thereby travel to the USA — the land full of rich Guajarati’s of Indian descent whose hearts bleed for a Hindu India, even as they themselves remain away from their motherland.
But even though he has done four trips to the US, he has done justice to other nations as well.
He left for foreign shores 60 times covering 46 countries and six continents. He still has two years to cover Antarctica, Moon and some others which got left out due to municipal elections back home and for which he had to personally campaign.
So, just like a little kid enjoying a long denied sweet, he is making the most of it while it lasts.
But coming from India, it is quite strange that he loves all this offshore travel. India is synonymous with getting overseas work done in India without going abroad.
The stupendous success of the Indian BPO industry (don’t dare call it call centre business) is testimony that all the world’s problems can be solved from either Bangalore, Gurgaon or Navi Mumbai.
Software companies in India have made billions using ‘Con Calls’ (that’s short for Conference Call lest you confuse it with the other con which Indians are known for)
Its quite simple really — throw in managers from sundry countries together at a pre-decided time in their respective offices and in their respective countries, patch their calls together like an intercom, share their screens and a conference call is in progress. No waste of money traveling across continents, no packing unpacking hassles (do head of states do that?) and best of all no immigration and visa worries. One cannot say con calls save time because of the countless hours preparing the Excel sheets, PowerPoint decks, pains taken to accurately document the MoM’s (minutes of meeting dumbo) and then the one person who spends one minute finding an innocuous error in the MoM, writes an email to his boss with five distribution lists in the cc loop so that five hundred people waste time reading and responding to that email. Poof! All that time saved is gone..
But, it works.
Call it a mystery, but video conferencing earns companies billions of dollars year after year. (“earns” may be a bit of a misnomer, it is more like saves; but for a government always talking of projected savings or potential savings when it talks about the success of Aadhaar; “earns” should do pretty well)
Having established that India is the world leader in the IT sector one of Modi’s many achievements is Digital India. He (or his team) conjured up the term. They also conjured up that it is a success. Media lapped it up — just like everything thrown at it. The term is simply a cover up to the fact that Indians do not work — especially in government. Hence, it is best left to computers to do the work. Computers can be junked and upgraded; unions are not so expendable. This was recognized in the 1980’s by the then PM Rajiv Gandhi who brought in computers into banks so as to improve efficiency. But the resilient government servants still don’t work and blame the computers.
In this “new” digital India, everything is just a click away. A lot of the government services are online or somewhere out there on a cloud. This has apparently saved the government a lot (put any number here), has brought people closer and made borders vanish. Trains are inaugurated and satellites are launched from distant locations by ministers sitting in Delhi using digital link. The world of egovernance is in your pocket.
The above lines are not mine, I have borrowed freely from the BJP propaganda (err… government press releases)
Courts allow testimony via video conference and district collectors have con calls with their political masters through such high tech communication links.
Has it crossed your mind about how weapons are launched in modern warfare? Modi is not going to go with his broad 56” chest (editor: please verify) camouflaged, holding a missile through forests, across the border a la Sunny Deol and ignite it like a diwali rocket and scoot hands on ears. Hell, he may get lost before that!
The missiles are launched at the press of a presumably red colored button on a mobile phone from the comfort of an office or house in Delhi after which all important cronies head into an underground safe bunker from where that they can enjoy watching the mayhem on live TV with packs of desi Patanjali namkeen and snacks.
Everything is digital. Your identity is a 12 digit Aadhaar number. Your mobile number is your bank. The solution to every problem is either digital or Aadhaar or cow. If neither of the three are applicable, the problem itself does not exist.
So then, why doesn't Modi use all these gizmos to get work done? I mean, even WhatsApp offers free video calling to most countries and where WhatsApp is blocked, Skype still works for free. There are of course far more robust conference solutions but they cost a lot. As Modi keeps tweeting about all the savings made due to his Digital India plan, why spend money when free is available?
I am worried why a true blue Gujju like Modi has not implemented this and showcased it as his breakthrough achievement (maybe he will — at the fourth anniversary jamboree because then he will have to remain in India to campaign at panchayat level in villages.
All these bi party, multiparty agreements, treaties, accords, partnerships, frameworks, promises, deals, contracts, charters, pacts, memorandums are anyway drafted by various ministries where skilled highly educated, highly paid civil servants with real academic degrees go all through the paperwork, burn the proverbial midnight oil, send it back and forth ‘n’ number of times to subordinates, seniors, other ministries, get them vetted by the law ministry the intelligence agencies, the principal secretary and finally the gardener before finalizing it into a fancy document which is signed in a flourish by the heads of states using fancy looking ink pens.
Hell, why not just digitally sign them and exchange copies using 64 bit encryption? If it works for my property documents and banking, then why not for the nation?
Unless of course digital signature is meaningless which then puts a whole big question mark over Digital India.
The pomp and adulation received in foreign countries is a sham. It is as fake as the plastic smile the girl behind the check-in counter gives at the airport. Does anyone seriously think that they are doing all that cheering, shouting and playing bands out of love? Gosh, no! It’s their job to play the band on the arrival of heads of states and at funerals. They get paid for doing it. I cannot fathom how the otherwise sharp PM does not get it.
And if sightseeing is the issue, there are so many videos on YouTube that you never would want to take a trip outside. Just adjust the air conditioning accordingly. Besides, in four trips to the USA, Modi has only been to New York and Washington and not been to Vegas! Such a criminal waste of time and money.
I remember reading once that the PM prefers simple Indian meals and does not drink alcohol. So all that food on the table is most likely not for his consumption (unless the simple food bit was propaganda) Additionally, he has so proudly claimed that he has a 56” chest (editor). Can’t be seen having a stomach beyond that, can we?
So, if it is dhokla, khichadi and chaas or a Gujarati thali, then there is no place like India.
And if the whole idea is to have a photo op for the media and the vote bank back home, the simplest way is to circulate fake news about the PM being in Kirgyasthan on a state visit, add plenty of Photoshopped images, put a lot of out-of-context videos from WhatsApp University, edit suitably, put in a slogan like “BMKJ” or “Share if you are a true Indian/Real Hindu” etc and be done with it. That should be the simplest task that the party’s IT cell has ever undertaken. People would lap it up and probably bring down the WhatsApp servers with all those shares.
Modi has such powerful oratory that he convinced about one third of India that they would get big time money in their bank accounts if they voted for him. They did.
He told them to open new bank accounts for free by giving their identity. They did, hoping that the promised money will come there.
He took their cash savings and made them put it in banks. People did and waited for money to come to their bank account.
Now, the banks are bust.
In a country where 90% of the population believes Dharmendra when he shouts “Kutte,kaminey mein tera khoon pi jaunga” (dog rascal, I’ll drink your blood), getting 33% vote share is pretty easy for an orator — provided minor irritants like ethics and morality are kept out of the way. So foreign trips are strictly not needed.
I hope the prime minister gives all the above a serious thought and realizes the futility of foreign trips — especially when he relax in a Gorakhpur cowshed and feel at home.
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