Callous, insensitive, uncouth, boorish, creepy, cruel: you can add many more adjectives to describe the response of the government to the SOS calls by Indian citizens – mostly students – trapped in war-hit Ukraine. After the cries grew louder and even the noise of the election campaign could not suppress them, the government launched what it calls a grand evacuation drive and named it Operation Ganga.
The grand nomenclature was aimed at the constituents of the ruling party, who have been turned into war-hungry zombies. Since there is no opportunity for a surgical strike or a Balakot-type air attack, this name has been drummed into the ears of the electorate. I say electorate because the Bhartiya Janata Party looks at people as entities representing mere votes. And it feels compelled to keep staging events to cause an adrenaline rush that can produce these ‘votes’. To keep the excitement level high. To keep the minds of voters in a permanent state of agitation. To make it appear that they are in an emergency which requires suspension of normal expectations. To hand themselves over to the authorities who obviously know better. To trust them.
It is also crucial for the BJP to create a spectacle of this emergency. To again create a make-believe situation. Images give an impression of reality. It was not surprising, therefore, that the government sent Indian Air Force planes to Poland and other countries adjoining Ukraine. They make it look like this was a military intervention by the ‘dear leader’. The leader also sent his ministers on these flights to keep the political messaging front and centre.
However, this did not prove sufficient. The ‘operation’ needs cameras and a breathless commentary to beam it in to the homes of the electorate and make it seem authentic and impressive. So, the leader-loving anchors of pliant TV channels were plucked from the election fields and flown to the ‘war-zone’ to relay the rescue-mission and give their trusting viewers a sense of how the leader is always at work. Poor chap, he is doing double duty. He already has the task of ‘saving’ Uttar Pradesh and now these ‘failed students’ in Ukraine have raised such a hue and cry that he has been forced to give them his attention too.
Unfortunately, the students who have apparently been rescued are not impressed. They have their mobile cameras to transmit the reality to people back home. They have also not lost their voice in the din of complicit media. They punctured the balloon floated by the government.
The official account of Operation Ganga says it is to assist in the evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine. In reality, since the government woke up too late, most of the Indians have had to make their own way from Ukraine to neighbouring countries, from where the Indian government is arranging transportation for them to fly to India. Whether this can be called an ‘evacuation’, let alone an ’emergency evacuation’ is questionable.
It took a student to call the bluff of the BJP government and the pliant media:
“If the government had taken us out from a war zone, that would be called an evacuation. The government’s advisory to us was to reach the [Ukraine] border by yourselves. So how can this be called an evacuation? … Once some managed to reach Romania, they could book a general flight themselves”.
Not only her, but all the students interviewed by the media have said loudly and clearly that nearly all of them who have managed to come out of war-torn Ukraine have done so on their own. They did not get any support from the Indian government and its embassy. Even at Ukraine’s borders, which the students reached after facing great danger, there was no representative of the Indian government to coordinate with the authorities of Ukraine to help them cross over to safety.
But when the students reach the safe zone by themselves, they find the ministers of the BJP government with flowers in their hands.
The ministers enter the aircraft and tell them that they should thank Modiji that they are alive and safe. That Modiji is very concerned for them and is working day and night to ensure their safe return. One of the officials even asks them to shout ‘Modiji Ki Jai.’ The lukewarm response of the students to this exhortation is only one evidence that the students are not ready to buy the government propaganda.
They are upset and angry with the nonresponse of the government. Their calls were not answered by the embassy. The embassy made no arrangements for them to be taken safely from their places to the borders. It kept sending them confusing signals and they were left to fend for themselves.
The government has not been able to create a safe corridor with the help of the aggressor Russia, who should feel thankful for India’s silence on their behalf in international forums. Indian ministers are now advising students to take a longer route on foot and try to reach any border. It is clear that they are not being rescued at all. They have to cross that hurdle themselves and on the other side, the leader’s minions promise to welcome them with their smiles and slogans.
The students are not deceived. They are speaking and calling the whole government exercise a farce. But the ministers shamelessly continue in their sycophancy. Piyush Goyal took the cake when he posted a cartoon showing Modi as the bridge between the war zone and the safe zone and the students crossing by walking on his arms to reach the safe end. It also showed students of other countries left stranded by their leaders. This was a blatant lie – most countries have done much better than India – but that is what the leader and his men practise. This cartoon was promptly shared by many other ministers.
The visual Goyal put out was immediately corrected by netizens. Instead, they showed students swimming the stormy waters on their own with the leader standing on the other end looking at them with a flower.
“What good these flowers are?” an outraged student asked, throwing them aside. A mayor of a Romanian city was seen rebuking junior minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, who tried to do some grandstanding before him. He was also seen patronisingly patting a woman student repeatedly.
None of these leaders said sorry to the students for not being able to help them when and where they were most vulnerable. Students are seen walking past them, completely ignoring their PR antics. But all this has failed to deter the ruling party. And their followers in India too. They keep throwing up one lie after the other. An assertion was made again by Modi cult followers that Vladimir Putin had stopped his bombing campaign for six hours to give safe passage to Indian students. It was immediately exposed as a hoax but the the websites of the media houses did not take down the lie and it made its way to the main channel of information for the Modi crowd: WhatsApp.
Why this brazenness? What are they banking on?
While conducting this media blitzkrieg, the party also opened another front – against the students themselves. To generate resentment against their demand for safe passage. They are being called ‘losers’, ‘no good people’, ‘failures’ who had to go to a “small’’ country like Ukraine as they could not make the grade via the tough Indian NEET exam. Why do they want the government to support them? Do they qualify for it? They are being called parasites who did not get out in time as they were waiting for a free ride back home. Why should tax payers pay for them?
Thus, the aggrieved students were themselves held responsible for their fate. They were seen as too demanding and condemned for whining unnecessarily. We even heard middle-aged people raging at the students. Why they can’t walk? Why do they want buses? Don’t they have the energy of youth? How can they ask the government to arrange transport when there is a war there? How can the poor government meet all their expectations?
We have heard this question many times before. The protesting students of Jawaharlal Nehru University and other students had been maligned in a similar manner. They were portrayed as time-passers living off the money of tax payers. Similarly, the migrant labour were maligned when they were forced to leave their workplaces due to the first COVID-19 induced lockdown in 2020. First, the government refused to acknowledge their existence by lying in the Supreme Court and then its supporters attacked them for being irresponsible. They were seen as relief seekers, fleecing honest tax payers.
It is a psychological game that the leader is playing with his people. He is constantly telling survivors to attack those who are drowning. The sight of their fellow citizens sinking while they are themselves on firm ground fills them with guilt. They can liberate themselves from this shame only by blaming the victims for either bringing it upon themselves or by simply denying their plight. By calling them liars. They are seen as ungrateful, narrow-minded and selfish people. The survivors are seen as virtuous.
The same playbook was used to smear the farmers agitating against the farm laws. They were described as lazy, short-sighted people who could not see the larger picture. Before all this, the same logic was applied after the demonetisation and the application of the new Goods and Services Tax regime.
On every occasion, an illusion of emergency was created. The leader was shown as fighting a crisis-like situation.
For the last eight years, the voters have been told that the house is on fire and the leader is on a fire-fighting mission. You should not distract him with your regular demands. It is not the people but the poor leader who is under siege.
He is the one who is besieged and he is also the one who is the rescuer. He is correcting the wrongs of the medieval past and of the immediate past. He is a visionary who can identify the gaps. This great mission is bound to cause pain. Our duty is to bear with it. We can at least help him in his historical mission by not bothering him with our petty victimhood. Give him strength by keeping on smiling.
The students returning from Ukraine have, however, seen through the fraud. They have refused to play ball. One has to see if they succeed in turning those whom the leader perceives as ‘votes’ into independent minds.
(Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University. Courtesy: The Wire.)
