India: Will March 11 [2017] be a shocker? - UP election result forecast!

Faraz Ahmad's Blog, March 5, 2017

by Faraz Ahmad

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the other day, while addressing an election rally in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where he is currently busy campaigning, that the results of these elections out on March 11, less than a week from now, will shock his opponents. He obviously implied Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati.

I don’t know about these gentlemen. But I must admit that if, as Modi, as also some of our other soothsayers are predicting, he succeeds in winning UP assembly elections or rather almost all the five states that have gone to polls, with the sole exception of Uttarakhand, it will truly give Me a big shock. But more than shock it will despair me tremendously. It will make me lose faith in the fairness of the current political process and in fact to a large extent in the polity which despite all that has happened in the country and in UP close to last three years under Modi rule, still get swayed by his and his factotum Amit Shah’s blatantly communal rhetoric.

It will only prove that Modi was right in scrapping 86 per cent of our currency with one Sultani Firman, in undermining the institution of banks insofar as denying any citizen the right to his money safely deposited in the banks to be withdrawn in the hour of his need.

It will prove that people are not just blind but deaf too to the whole charade of demonetisaton putting an end to terrorism. The Prime Minister announced first that this is being done to prevent Pakistan from aiding terrorists coming from across the border. The other day he told a public meeting in UP that the terrorists have come as far as Kanpur to derail a train and kill hundreds of innocent citizens. Never mind what the NIA investigations have concluded so far. Let us take the Prime Minister at face value. Well then, is it not an open admission of the fact that his claim of breaking the back of terrorists from across the western borders, was so much of hot air?

Next he lamented of fake currency and stated that as the reason for scrapping all the Rs 500 and 1000 notes. And here we have crores and crores of fake currency notes of the new Rs 2000 denomination now being smuggled into India from Bangla Desh, disclosed the security agencies guarding our borders. So then that objective too, if it was actually an honest objective, though I don’t believe this, failed.

Then he went to town about putting an end to black money. But then all the 500 and 1000 notes are back in the banks. Whatever is left in Nepal and Bhutan where Indian currency is accepted freely, will also be shortly back in our banks, promised our Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Kathmandu the other day. Can’t people see that not one rich man ever stood in any queue outside any bank. Not one pillow full of 1000 and 500 notes was seized by Modi’s machinery. For all the TV news channel hypes we saw no display of anyone burning sackful of currency notes. That was one big lie. But are our people so taken in by the TV propaganda that they turn a blind eye to everything else.

Haven’t thousands of people in Okhla, Mayapuri and other industrial estates of Delhi returned home after losing their jobs? Hasn’t this influenced their decision to cast their vote in the current elections? If Modi wins, it means none of this really mattered. Whatever M

thing that they find in Modi a person who can put these bloody mullahs in their rightful place, under our shoe. He hinted that when he made Kabristan an electoral issue and he has the antecedents, what with the spectacular record of 12 years in Gujarat. That is the only thing that could persuade our voter to go for Modi and surely this would be a shocker.