BJP’s latest slogan: 'Less work, more vitriol'

In my earlier articles, I have explained how the BJP’s slogan of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’ had now become ‘Minimum Governance, Maximum Mind Games’, and their ‘Sampark for Samarthan’ actually appears more like ‘Sampark for Survival’.

Keeping this in mind and seeing the state of affairs in our country, one can conclude that the BJP, which came to power on the basis of false promises and slogans, is now feeling the heat.

It is not just the Opposition political parties, but even the citizens of our country, who have started to speak up about the BJP’s failures. These citizens are not just the ones who did not vote for the party — even their voters and supporters are now expressing their pain.

These voters feel betrayed, because they chose the BJP thinking that the party would deliver all it promised, and would turn into reality the rosy picture it had painted of a better life.

Elected representatives need to understand that they have to serve not just the ones who voted for them, but their whole constituency. Those whom the BJP failed are now raising their voices against the party, and this situation has rattled the BJP.

To cover up for all the promises that it cannot fulfil — promises that were unrealistic and were made only to play with people’s minds — the BJP is now resorting to forms of speech and dialogue that are vitriolic.

Therefore, the party’s new motto seems to be: ‘Less Work, more Vitriol’.

But the BJP is playing this game shrewdly.

They are being selective about using their vitriolic form of speech. The targets, so far, are only Opposition parties, and a certain section of the society which has been speaking freely against the party on social media platforms, and on print and electronic media.

Everyone is now aware of the trolls who chase you on social media platforms. These are the people who will follow you and reply to you the minute you express your views about the BJP. None of the replies will be based on facts, because they have very little to counter you. So the best they can do is to resort to vitriol and once they start that, they know that either you will stop responding, or will block them.

This is their motive — to stop people from expressing their truthful views.

The same is seen on television debates every night.

You will have spokespersons from the BJP or its allies, and there will be other people who may not be officially from the party, but will always be on its side. The strategy here is to attack the spokespersons from Opposition parties and curb their voices collectively.

When you are in a debate and you present facts and figures to highlight the government’s failures, these spokespersons, who know that they cannot counter you factually, will start interjecting while you are speaking to make sure you are not heard. They will start talking loudly about other issues that may not be related to the topic of the debate. When this happens, the anchor moves to another panelist, and you do not get a chance to finish what you were saying. There are some spokespersons who start saying things that push you to get angry, and this derails the debate.

What is also being revealed slowly but steadily is that many authors, lawyers etc. who appear on these debates are nothing more than BJP spokespersons, albeit unofficially. They have trained themselves, pleased the powers that be and earned their brownie points. The BJP is resorting to such tactics to win the battle of perception.

The BJP had overestimated that not just the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but even the 2024 General Elections was theirs to be won. But they have now begun to realise that this now appears like a farfetched dream. They did not anticipate that the citizens of our country would see through their lies so soon.

To prove this, we have examples of several recent by-polls that the BJP has lost. This is happening because they have not been able to fulfil the wants of the people and give them a stable life. The country is in trouble due to the economic slowdown, rising fuel prices, devaluation of the rupee, farmer suicides —the list goes on and on.

The Lok Sabha polls are scheduled for 2019, but the general perception is that the elections may happen much before the scheduled time. The BJP is likely to do this because they have been losing elections lately, and therefore want to salvage their remaining vote bank before they lose it completely.

All this will definitely not work.

There will soon come a time when people will get angry not just with the BJP’s failure to serve the country, but also because of this blatant use of uncultured language and behaviour.

The fact is, if only the party had spent more time working for the people of our country, they would not have to resort to vitriol now.

Also read: Had Randeep Surjewala been in the Congress of 1950s and '60s, he would have been sacked