AGENDA. A seditious budget

The current row over ‘sedition’ in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been framed as one between the freedom of expression of the liberals versus the overt patriotism of the right. Superficially, that is true. But it also has a lot more to do with the economy — and Monday’s budget — than we may think.

When Narendra Modi won the 2014 elections, perhaps the biggest contributor was the youth vote. In Modi, India’s bulging youth population saw a messiah: one who would create jobs for them as they entered the workforce in the millions. Unfortunately, that has not happened. Labour Bureau statistics show that job growth has remained under stress, particularly in the manufacturing sector, despite the Prime Minister’s Make in India call.

The inability of the Modi government to push through major economic reforms like the Land Bill and the GST Bill has dented business confidence. The rupee just fell to an all-time low, the stock markets are back to where they were two years back; all the ‘Modi momentum’ has been wiped out. Business leaders may not want to admit it for fear of reprisal, but the fact is that the positive sentiment around the economy and job growth that we saw in May 2014 is no longer there.

Faced with a bleak future, India’s youth, who are most affected by this negative turn, have started rebelling: from Hyderabad University, JNU and Jadavpur University, to the Jat students demanding government job quotas. They no longer want to listen to Modi’s excuses about the UPA government’s follies. Modi promised them the sky, and now they are demanding it. Across the world, when young people do not have job prospects, they take to the politics of protest to vent their frustration.

The BJP government’s response to this situation has been cynical, anti-democratic and incredibly dangerous for the country. Instead of looking at the root of the problem — the failure to fix the economy and jobs — the government has clamped down on students who were voicing a legitimate demand. When Kanhaiya Kumar shouted bhukhmari se azaadi (freedom from hunger), the provocation lay not in his slogan, but in the inability of successive governments to solve the food crisis. If Umar Khalid shouted slogans supporting Afzal Guru, the provocation was in the inability of governments to create a better Kashmir, verdant with economic opportunities.

When Arun Jaitley stands up to present his budget, he will do well to understand and address those ‘seditious’ slogans. This government should introspect how it has managed to throw away immense goodwill and the most decisive mandate in 30 years, within 20 months. More than 50 per cent of our population is younger than (or of the same age as) 28-year-old Kanhaiya Kumar. If this government loses the youth, it loses the nation. It is a lame duck.

The government’s failure to revive the economy has also resulted in the resurgence of the Left. Coupled with rural distress, the rebellion of the university youth will be perfect breeding ground for a left-wing ideology that seemed dead just a few months back. The resurgence of the Left is actually a much bigger problem for Modi than meets the eye.

While they may not be strong in most parts of the country, the Left is cadre-based and ideologically committed, just like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Left can match the RSS in both street heft and muscle power, in a manner that the Congress cannot. The recent murder of a RSS functionary in Kerala, allegedly by left-wing activists, shows that they will not take RSS intimidation lying down. Also, the Left is the most natural fulcrum around which a national anti-BJP alliance will take shape. And if the Opposition unites, Modi is doomed in 2019. Remember, the BJP got only 31 per cent of the popular vote in 2014, even at the height of the Modi wave.

The BJP’s top leadership understands the importance of the Left in uniting the opposition, and is therefore keen to finish off its student leadership. The right-wing assault on JNU is part of that ideological warfare, as is the effort to draw a false equivalence between Islamists and Leftists.

But the democratic way to kill the Left would be to present a budget that focuses on more free market reforms, on privatising and opening up more sectors to foreign investment, on creating a more conducive business atmosphere — most importantly, a budget that gives jobs to the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and their peers.

This budget has already been touted as make-or-break by several analysts. If Jaitley fails to deliver, not only will we continue with a moribund economy, we will also have a society that is further divided and even more frustrated, as different sections fight for shrinking resources. Jaitley might as well make it seditious.