A Trump-coded American (a mix of JD & Rubio) imposes tariffs, restricts H-1B work, threatens war, calls India a “hell-hole.” Modi, eyes lowered, hands folded, writes a cheque for five hundred billion dollars. The signature reads penpencildraw, a left-liberal account. The Instagram account is run by urban anti-Modi liberals who, on most other days, want a poorer, slower, more Nehruvian India.
The deeper point is that the cartoon assumes India should negotiate with America as a peer. Ten years ago the same artists would have mocked the premise itself, the militarism, the chest-thumping, the great-power posture. They would have drawn Modi as too assertive, not too pliant. The cartoon’s anger only makes sense if you have already accepted that India belongs at the table. The argument is no longer whether India should rise. It is over who should manage the rise, and for whose benefit?
Once you see that, the hypocrisy follows. A section of India’s liberal commentariat treats Modi’s growth model as a moral failure but discovers its nationalism when Trump tweets. They want Indian dignity in the abstract and Indian poverty in practice. Mocking Modi is the only nationalism they have left.
The second observation is structural. Modi has no children. Yogi has no children. Ascetic leaders lack the direct hereditary incentive structure that has powered South Asian corruption for seventy years. They can still build patronage systems and ideological courts. They cannot build dynasties.
The cartoon mocks Modi for a transactional posture with Trump. Transaction is not corruption. The cheque, if it exists, flows to the United States Treasury, not to a son in London or a son-in-law in Dubai. That is the unglamorous structural improvement of the last decade, but it does not draw well.
The real gripe is distributional. The headline rate is strong. The spread across castes, states, and sectors is not. Bihar is not Gujarat. If penpencildraw wanted to draw something true, they could draw the Gini curve, or the state-level dispersion of per-capita income, or the wage share of GDP. They drew Modi giving Trump a cheque instead, because that is the cartoon the audience already wanted.
It tells us that even Modi’s critics now expect India to act like a great power, in no small thanks to him, and have nothing to say about the country that actually exists underneath.
>They want Indian dignity in the abstract and Indian poverty in practice
Modi derangement syndrome is definitely a thing. I have seen genuinely intellectual folks completely and utterly lose their shit and turn into one-eyed partisans on this. Its….amusing at times.
I mean, I’m at best, a grudging, unwilling endorser of the Modi administration, and impatient with its policy executions and mis-steps. But the ‘LeLi’ froth and vitriol on Modi, consistently overlooks the opportunity for genuine criticism and opts for the sensationalized fluff.
Genuine criticism are made all the time, but most people social media feeeds only gives caricatures of these things.
And when something like the CJP is defamed to such an extent by critics of left liberals I wonder how unbiased these people are in the first place.
Problem with a lot of left liberals is that their anti BJP/Modi sentiment often crosses over into anti Hindu/Indian which leads to people on the centre going over to the BJP.
A BJP alternative will only come about in 15-20 years when India is rich enough and you have a “Indiatva” party which has politics similar to mine (or Patel’s).
Its shocking how incompetent the Congress has been, and even others like the AAP. There is a massive gaping opportunity for a viable opposition.
Anti-incumbency is an incredibly potent force in politics, especially more so in the Indian variant, given the high turnout percentages, especially on the lower ends of the economic spectrum. Takes a special level of incompetence to fail this consistently. Its a bit disappointing, because the absence of opposition is a critical risk to India’s development and growth prospects.
But the Congress with its desperation for power, resorting to shockingly divisive tactics, that are not at all in Indian interests, make it impossible for ‘neutrals’ to support it.
The AAP was falsely accused of corruption and most of its leaders were in jail, the congress is routinely criticized in the media and has 16 times less money than the BJP.
Ignoring all of this and saying that they are incompetent is ignoring the huge difference of power and tools that one has and the other does not.
There was a time when BJP was opposition and Congress was in power was it not? The advantages that incumbents have are well known.
The Congress made explicit incompetent choices. To push for divisive ‘caste’ census and ‘redistribution’ – I mean, challenging the federal centric governance model? Nehru would be rolling in his grave for his part-time politician grandson to be making such ill-fated proposals.
politics do evolve..
aren’t the Oligarchics more destructive than say Caste censuses.
this is a question not a comment.
There are certain core principles that you don’t ‘evolve’ from. Equality is one, for example.
For a diversity to the exponential nation-state like India, a national political party, trying to suddenly change its spots, because it sees regionalism as the only path for it to the Kursi is undeniably cynical.
Stoking such fault-lines is not in Indian interests, regardless of what your politics are.
If the BJP is to be rightly criticized for deploying incendiary political rhetoric that is against Bangladeshis and muslims, then by the same token such divisive bullshit by the congress ought to be called out as well. Not explained away as some sort of tactical political expediency. This is a playbook that IIRC, the Congress attempted to use in the1980s in Punjab, and it blew up in India’s face.
//There was a time when BJP was opposition and Congress was in power was it not? The advantages that incumbents have are well known.//
The money that both parties had at that time was almost equal and we had a media that would give the opposition space as well.
//The Congress made explicit incompetent choices. To push for divisive ‘caste’ census and ‘redistribution’ – I mean, challenging the federal centric governance model? Nehru would be rolling in his grave for his part-time politician grandson to be making such ill-fated proposals.//
The same divisive caste census promised by the ruling party in Bihar elections which is going to be part of the next census whenever it happens and I am willing to bet that even redistribution will one day find its way in the ruling partys manifesto, just like how money distribution proposed by Rahul Gandhi, practised by Mamta Banerjee now does.
These are not incompetent choices but what a large amount of the public unfortunatelty wants.
>The money that both parties had at that time was almost equal and we had a media that would give the opposition space as well.
This is……..ostrich like. Incumbent administrations have historically enjoyed disproportionate advantages in Indian politics. Especially congress in the 20th century. Lets not pretend otherwise.
Did the congress have 10000 crores in personal finance, unquestioning support of the media, that does not even discuss pertinent issues.
Every incumbent has advantages to act like one the congress has the same disadvantages today that the bjp had in 2014 is not correct.
How do you explain Rahul Gandhi’s opposition to the Galathea Bay Project?
The entire project is more than the military base and the transshipment port that is being made, the entire island coast seems to be transformed to make it into some luxury destination for the rich.
His messaging could be better, by not debating on the port and the military base, but the commercial town, the international airport and all the other activities planned over the next thirty years cant be defended as national importance. Furthermore we already have a rapid action command on Sri Vijaya port and Vizignam is being made into a transshipment port as well. If in the next 10 years India learns to value forest and trees more than the land they are on, they may very well be a rethink on the scale beyond the port and military base, with regards to this project. There is no strategic or national security reason to turn the Nicobar island into a tourism hub.
In case you are not aware of what is being planned, have a look at the below:
GNI Plans for Development.png (1200×1671)
Hawaii is more than just Pearl Harbor for the US is it not?
I would love to spend my tourism dollars in a destination in Andaman-Nicobar instead of the Maldives. And I am not just saying this, before going to the Maldives, I desperately tried to see if I could go to Lakshadweep or Andamans instead. But the option did not exist.
Opposing development “because its for the rich” – that is precisely the type of incompetent stupidity that Congress and LeLis indulge in. Its povertarian bulldust badly cloaked with high-minded rhetoric.
“Oh my God, how dare the BJP try to add ‘tourism and entertainment’ to this greenfield project”? One that’s being built in a place with crystal clear beachhead and ocean water.
India is at barely $3k per capita income, and you are justifying Greta Thunberg-esque melodrama? What universe do such folks inhabit.
Same energy as “wHy dOeS InDiA haVe SpAcE PrOgRaM instead of addressing poverty”.
Why here at a cost of a pristine rainforest which is needed for India and the world mkre than another tourist property.
Make this in amravati, Lakshadweep, port Blair where there is already connectivity, infrastructure and capability to hold 3 lakh people something thst the Nicobar Island has never had in its entire history. Does this place even have enough water?!
And btw the locals of Hawaii hate its tourism industry for gentrified.
We also need to see how tourism is causing issues in the Himalayas to pause and think of whether your comfort is worth the ecological cost.
This is not something Greta Thunberg sequence melodram but a reality we need to confront now. There are multiple other options including in the andamans this can be done where the natural environment has already been denuded.
Keep in mind were it not for the port and military base the tourism infrastructure would not even be justifiable at all.
And you may think thst Rahul Gandhi is wrong about picking this issue just like how he was supposedly wrong about the caste census but history tells a different tale.
>And btw the locals of Hawaii hate its tourism industry for gentrified.
Ok, there is no point in this discussion. ‘Gentrification’???
This is the classic LeLi problem. Copy-pasting and Larping about first-world issues in a completely different setting where it is utter nonsense.
Btw, have you been to Hawaii? Please don’t educate me on how the locals hate tourism there.
NIMBY-ism, faux concerns on ‘gentrification’ – I mean.
None of this is to say that India should be thoughtless about breakneck development.
But the fact that you are so willing to set aside the viability and importance of developing Nicobar Island from a security perspective, coupled with your trumpeting of “trees and gentrification” indicates a partisan, non-objective bent. Because I have seen how thoughtful and insightful your comments are on other topics.
//But the fact that you are so willing to set aside the viability and importance of developing Nicobar Island from a security perspective, coupled with your trumpeting of “trees and gentrification//
Read what I have written. The port and the base should go through.
The tourism infrastructure is not needed and cant be defended when other areas with less natural.beauty and forest exist.
yeah, no offense, but you’ve lost credibility for me, on this topic.
I dont think someone who thinks gentrification and environmental degradation are first world problems and not issues we are seeing right now should be speaking about credibility.
Especially when even those in favor of thr project cant defend the luxury tourism aspects and only focus on the port and military base. Even your own justification completely sidestep that there are other similar areas this can be done without destroying pristine rainforest.
Anyways within ten years you will probably see how correct I am on this aspect itself
Like I already said above, I’m under no illusions about the double-edged sword that is ‘development’.
But the politicization and unserious opposition to this project, is a textbook example of what makes me skeptical of the Congress, and its supporters. The fact that you cannot bring yourself to admit even partial criticism of ‘your side’ is what hurts your credibility.
Lol, I disagreed with RG about the entire project being rubbish and said that his messaging could be better to just target the tourism infra which even you could not defend under strategic or national interest like the port and military base. Like right in front of you, I am going much above and beyond anything you have shown in criticizing your favorite party.
I am well aware that an entire ecosystem is present to shield a person from accountability and the people who are under it, often dont realize they are not in any position to judge anyone on mattters of credbility or criticism to begin with.
The sheer arrogance of the premise, that anybody who disagrees with your perspective is somehow part of some “ecosystem”….is amusing.
Not part of, but definitely influenced by and ecosystem that works round the clock to sanitize, normalize and defend all negative news attached to a person.
This is not even something in doubt and is visible to all who can see. Godi media and IT cell and their influence are not myths I am.making up
//Problem with a lot of left liberals is that their anti BJP/Modi sentiment often crosses over into anti Hindu/Indian which leads to people on the centre going over to the BJP//
This is only a confusion among people who link a political party with a country and a religion.
We sae recently how a 12th standard student was called a Pakistani on twitter by a DD news anchor because he expressed a grievance or the meltdown over CJP in the last week, the same people who accuse the Congress of being against a religion and a country cannot seperate the countrys interests from a political partys interest.
You got it wrong, we have been told since the G20 summit that we are guru of the world, that everyone looks to us and that our PM can even stop wars.
This is an expectation that the party has created, the people you are referring to are just taking this to its logical conclusion amd asking accountability when reality does not match expectation. Something that was common years ago.
And the same people would be saying the same thing about Manmohan Singh, when he was alive.and Rahul Gandhi if he ever finds himself in the PM seat.
To take this criticism more seriously, what exactly is being said above that is wrong?
Ram Madhav, basically expressed the same sentiment without bringing up the US wrongdoing. Again, there are lots of good reasons why we should be expecting to be treated better.
Ram Madhav’s US remarks on Russian and Iranian oil spark row: ‘How is India not doing enough?’ – Firstpost
“expecting to be treated better” is a sentiment that a lot of countries currently share when it comes to dealing with the Drumpf administration. From Canada, to the UK, to Japan and Korea, and beyond.
So its not as if India is somehow immune to this. Or Drumpfian malfeasance is somehow to be attributed to Jaishankar and Modi?
None of the leaders of other countries campaigned for trump or sacrificed our own alternative sources of oil unwillingly.
We also went to negotiate much before any other country.
If Rahul Gandhi was the PM and made a big deal of his personal relationship with Trump, sacrificed our own options unwillingly and one of his ministers saif the same thing Ram Madhav did I dont think you would be making similar arguments for his sake.
so….your quibble is that the current administration attempted to establish a personal rapport with a 2 time American President, who was clearly going to make some major changes in policy, and because it failed, it shouldn’t have attempted as such?
>sacrificed our own alternative sources of oil unwillingly.
Its fine to point out problems. Kindly suggest what the alternative policy should or could have been. This is why the criticism for criticism sake, unmoored from geopolitical and economic reality, makes one skeptical of the Congress and their ilk. And again, to stress, this is coming from a person, who legit doesn’t care about the BJP, actually dislikes Modi for his past anti-muslim BS, and wants to see alternative political options.
The way I see it, such critiques are just petty and tangential, just a desire to ‘knock down’ Modi a peg or 2. Which to me, is unserious – just as unserious as the stupid hagiographic hyping up that’s done by those who support him.
That’s the bottom-line, the political opposition at the moment strikes me as empty-vessel tamasha. Lets go on a Gandhi style padyaatra, so our dashing hero can LARP as someone who cares about the common man, while when it comes to the actual hard work in the trenches of policy definition, working on the ground-game for elections, the man is off on vacations.
//so….your quibble is that the current administration attempted to establish a personal rapport with a 2 time American President, who was clearly going to make some major changes in policy, and because it failed, it shouldn’t have attempted as such?//
What is the point of campaigning for Trump, making a big show of how much he respects and how much one person is responsible for India being well regarded when, when push comes to shove we are treated worse than many others. You cant claim credit on one hand and then act all innocent as if Trumps true nature wss not known to all who bothered to check. If one wants bouquets they should also be ready to take the brickbats as well. Something that an entire ecosystem had sprung up to deny which is clearly working
//Its fine to point out problems. Kindly suggest what the alternative policy should or could have been. This is why the criticism for criticism sake, unmoored from geopolitical and economic reality, makes one skeptical of the Congress and their ilk. And again, to stress, this is coming from a person, who legit doesn’t care about the BJP, actually dislikes Modi for his past anti-muslim BS, and wants to see alternative political options.//
Be like Indira Gandhi, dont buckle under pressure, focus on doing what is in our interests since anyways that is what is clearly working with the bullies at the trump administration. If the best thst can be done is the same thing thst the congress did then what is piunt of comparing one favorable to another at least with the congress we are not going to be gaslighted and will be told the truth.
//The way I see it, such critiques are just petty and tangential, just a desire to ‘knock down’ Modi a peg or 2. Which to me, is unserious – just as unserious as the stupid hagiographic hyping up that’s done by those who support him.//
The critiqued levelled by the opposition arw the same ones that was levelled by the bjp. Just that the bjps critiques wete given airtime by the media.
>Be like Indira Gandhi, dont buckle under pressure, focus on doing what is in our interests since anyways that is what is clearly working with the bullies at the trump administration
Indira had a ‘friendship treaty’ with the Soviets, a global superpower who backstopped her administration in word and deed, allowing her the luxury to ‘not buckle under pressure’.
Today’s context is not the same.
>we are not going to be gaslighted and will be told the truth.
The Congress administration signing documents in Egypt, giving false equivalences about “Hindu terror” is what is gaslighting.
Diplomacy and Press Releases from the Foreign ministry putting favorable ‘spin’ on the situation is not “gaslighting”. It is literally their job to do so. This is simply your partisan bias leaking.
//Indira had a ‘friendship treaty’ with the Soviets, a global superpower who backstopped her administration in word and deed, allowing her the luxury to ‘not buckle under pressure’.
Today’s context is not the same.//
We have seen that for national interest people will take any kind of suffering, furthermore, India literally runs the US IT industry, its pharmaceuticals, is necessary to counter China and above all this administration respects strength, that is why the US is still discussing with Putin and Xi. Tha we dont have even better leverage or not friends paints a very bad picture of the diplomacy of the last decade.
//The Congress administration signing documents in Egypt, giving false equivalences about “Hindu terror” is what is gaslighting.
Diplomacy and Press Releases from the Foreign ministry putting favorable ‘spin’ on the situation is not “gaslighting”. It is literally their job to do so. This is simply your partisan bias leaking.//
The congress literally got Pakistan on the FATF and blacklisted the country, whatever Digvijay missteps on Hindu terror is limited to Digvijay himself, once Pakistans angle became clear, the whole hindu terror angle dropped. You may forget history does not mean I will.
And that is not the gaslighting I am talking about, it is the spin from the mainstream media that depends on government ads that paints a positive spin to everything and goes out of its way to distract, as well as the takedowns of social media posts that are unfavorable, or the burial of CAG reports that are less than favorable. Of course the press secretary will give a positive spin, but the media is more than just what is offically on the governments payroll.
you……clearly are in need of a reality check.
yep, even non BJP supporters will freely acknowledge that on the Pakistan and terrorism front – the BJP has definitely done significantly better – from Uri to Balakot to Sindoor. But once again, your partisan view sees it differently. That’s fine. I do not need to convince you of the facts. They simply are what they are.
As far as “media coverage” goes, I’m not sure why you are so fixated on it. People aren’t stupid. Propaganda almost always gets recognized. Ignore the noise. Stick to the substance.
//you……clearly are in need of a reality check.//
We are not going to be replaced by AI within this decade.
//yep, even non BJP supporters will freely acknowledge that on the Pakistan and terrorism front – the BJP has definitely done significantly better – from Uri to Balakot to Sindoor.//
Non bjp supporters will acknowledge that the base for much of the marketed success is the work thst thr congress did. We were already seeing lowering terrorist attacks under the congress, as a result of them learning from 26/11 and building capacity, protocol and intelligence. We also dont forget that there were lapse that led to Pathankot and Uri themselves that conveniently are never brought up in favor of focusing only on the positives.
//But once again, your partisan view sees it differently. That’s fine. I do not need to convince you of the facts. They simply are what they are.
As far as “media coverage” goes, I’m not sure why you are so fixated on it. People aren’t stupid. Propaganda almost always gets recognized. Ignore the noise. Stick to the substance.//
Agreed facts are what they are and the whole reason why we still discuss the congress faults while making excuses for the others failures and helping them avoid accountability is the media coverage whose whole purpose is to convince that no matter what failures one is better than the others. This fact only looks true because other inconvenient facts ate glossed over at regular intervals.
I am focusing on topic it is you who are made to believe due to the work of our media that those criticising a particular person are neither unserious or under some derangement syndrome when they are basically just treating all political parties with power the way they should be