The Prime Minister strikes Platinum

Caveat: Some of what you are about to read happened. Some of it did not, though it could so easily have. Either way, a pinch of salt would help garnish the offering.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is celebrating his 75^th birthday, his platinum jubilee, which came about on September 17. The present continuous tense is employed since the celebrations, countrywide, are expected to go on for a month. Let me rephrase that. India that is Bharat is celebrating, with much fanfare, its Prime Minister’s crossing of this seminal milestone. Doubtless, all his colleagues, friends and acolytes have been gathering outside 7, Lok Kalyan Marg (Race Course Road is considered an abomination) to shower him with blessings and good wishes. Sweetmeat shops (any other meat will invite capital punishment) would have made roaring trade with laddoos and jalebis selling like hot cakes. In western countries, they say it the other way round. The media, particularly some select newspapers and television channels have pulled out all the stops, left no stone unturned, no avenue unexplored and any other cliché you might wish to employ, to mark the occasion. Several columns of space and oodles of air time were devoted to singing the praises of our charismatic leader.

All this is par for the course and only to be expected in a country where hero worship of our tallest leaders is an article of faith and practically enshrined in the Constitution ever since we gained independence. What is of far greater interest to many of us is the fact that President Donald Trump saw fit to extend his personal greetings to his ‘dear friend Narendra.’ Whether he warbled Happy birthday over the wires or not, we shall never know. Thank heavens for small mercies. What is worthy of note is that Mr. Modi graciously returned Trump’s goodwill gesture . Not that it was Trump’s birthday or anything, but you get the drift. If Trump was first off the blocks to greet the PM, Vladimir Putin and Pope Leo were not far behind, snapping at his heels (Trump’s heels) while remotely proffering a congratulatory hand. Xi Jinping, as is his wont, remained tight-lipped. Other heads of state don’t count.

Did India’s Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi extend his good wishes as per informal protocol? He probably did after a fashion, though he was readying his much-touted hydrogen bomb as a birthday present. Said bomb, bearing the legend ‘Vote Chori,’ from what little we could glean, appeared to have downed tools. Went down with a whimper. Yet again. The wick didn’t quite catch. The spirited young man, however, will not be cowed down. He promises to rise from the ashes, Phoenix-like, and return with another weapon of mass destruction. This time with a bang. His persistence is praiseworthy.

Amidst all this bonhomie (for the most part) there are rumours, entirely unfounded and unreported, that put a different spin on this ‘feast of reason and flow of soul’ between the two heads of state who have been at cross purposes lately. Trump and Modi that is. They haven’t exactly been on the chummiest of terms, not to put too fine a point on it. One version has it that Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s henchmen and the bloke who specialises in dropping at least two bricks every day on the ongoing, fractious trade negotiations between India and the United States, is alleged to have suggested that it was the Indian Prime Minister’s office that contacted the White House a few days before ‘dear friend’ Modi’s birthday and made a craven request that Mr. Trump should call and wish our PM well on D-Day. An anonymous caller from the White House is rumoured to have responded by saying, ‘You can hardly expect our President to recall birthdays of the heads of so many nations, when he can barely remember Melania’s. However, since you have made the request during this delicate period in Indo-US relations, we will pass your request on to President Trump.’

While there has been no official reaction from the Indian side to this unofficial, unverified bizarre report, one junior functionary from the PMO who understandably wishes to remain nameless, vehemently responded by saying, ‘If somebody has, in fact, suggested that we made the first move, we can only respond in a language the Americans can understand. Go tell that to the marines. Our Prime Minister only thanked President Trump in response to the latter’s birthday greetings. That is the sum and substance of it. The rest is baloney.’ Apocryphal or not, this has a familiar ring to it.

We now await Navarro’s next gaffe with bated breath. Meanwhile, we can expect more ‘good cop, bad cop’ pronouncements from all the President’s men. If Navarro is the bad cop, the well-groomed Secretary of State, Marco Rubio usually steps in to play the good cop – ‘Ties with India is one of the top relationships the U.S. has in the world today.’ Really? You could have fooled me, Marco. I suppose the strategy is to keep India off kilter, but it does not appear to be working, judging from the President’s feeble, conciliatory gestures of late, followed immediately by the H-1B jolt. ‘It’s all rather confusing, really,’ as Spike Milligan’s crazy creation, Neddie Seagoon used to intone in The Goon Show all those years ago.

To add spice to this whole brouhaha, one of India’s prominent economists advising the Government has confidently predicted that the 25% secondary sanction by America on India’s exports will soon be lifted, post which a further reduction can be expected on the base tariff. And presumably everything will be, in Wodehouse-speak, oojah-cum-spiff. When I read that, I was wondering if it was entirely wise on the learned gentleman’s part to have made such a bold, public statement, even if talks behind the scenes appeared to indicate such optimism. Tempting fate, I felt. Waving the proverbial red rag to a bull that has been very bearish towards India. Then again, what do I know? Encouraging animal spirits, as propounded by John Maynard Keynes is all very well, but tread warily lest they should turn around and bite you in the fleshy parts.

All said and done, the PM and his party henchmen will take full advantage of every available opportunity, in this instance his extended birthday bash, to reach out to the electorate to think well of the ruling alliance when election time comes round. With the Bihar state polls just around the corner, felicitating the country’s numero uno with all the pomp and splendour that his powerful party can muster, will only help the cause. The opposition alliance will have its work cut out, as has been the case these past few years, to create any kind of dent in the BJP bulwark. Of all the strategies that could be available to the I.N.D.I. Alliance, the least favourable option ought to be the ceaseless bad mouthing of the PM via the Election Commission. If for no other reason, one says this because it appears to be merely performative and counterproductive. They need to put on their thinking caps and come up with something different and original. Right now, that seems a far cry. Unless you are counting on, from distant Washington, the constant din created by ‘The Guns of Navarro,’ having an impact on the Indian voter. For now, those guns appear to be firing blanks while India’s birthday boy and his team burn the midnight oil to keep matters on an even keel amidst a highly complex, volatile and unpredictable global geopolitical scenario. The vat is simmering and with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia announcing their nuptials, it is boiling over.

Happy birthday, Prime Minister.

Tailpiece: I read with astonishment a news headline that famed Hollywood actor Johnny Depp has directed a film named Modi: Three Days on the Wings of Madness. Surprisingly, this startling news item received very little play in India. Only on reading the fine print did I realise, with relief, that it was a biopic on the turbulent life of Italian painter, Modigliani!