Grouse Questionnaire: Meet India Deserves Better, the hopeful new challenger to the Modi government

There’s nothing more clichéd than starting the new year with sunny optimism and shining hope. But guess who’s promising this in the times ahead, to lift the bleak, bitter atmosphere overrun by Hindutva, even institutional, hate, anger and outrage?

It’s none other than the people on the other side, once turbocharged with intellect, passion, righteousness and revolution, who are at last jettisoned by urgency and necessity to take on the current autarchy.

It’s the moment of truth.

It’s the good fight.

In a massive outreach effort and programme among civil society, there’s a bristle of excitement zig-zagging across the countries. Academics and students, activists and student leaders, farmers and women, poets and litterateurs, lawyers, journalists and musicians, community groups and labour unions, do-gooders and eccentrics – all are being bandied together to take on the brute might and force of the absolute Modi state and government.

And so, welcome to the Grouse Questionnaire, where opposition parties are asked probing questions and answers given too, based on their strategies, dealings and motives, if they are to seriously challenge prime minister Narendra Modi and the BJP-led NDA government in state elections and the general poll in 2024.

In this iteration of the questionnaire, it’s not a political party or leader. Instead, we look at the challenges, threats and agreements that will face civil society as they take on the reigning Modi establishment.

So, what’s new about civil society challenging the Modi government?

It’s, for the first time, perhaps in a long time, an alliance of all right-thinking, democratic and fiercely free people all over the country, coming together to challenge the domineering public discourse of hate, distortion of reality and history, and manufactured hurt and outrage. They are all set to take on the mothership of the Modi government – the RSS – and the hundreds of splinter Hindutva groups the hydra-headed RSS has spawned all over the country, apart from the vast, multi-million dollar funded social media empire that is in steady support of the Modi government and the Hindutva enterprise.

The idea and strategy is to reclaim the India that was constructed and built by the founders of the republic and the constitution – of a secular, democratic, inclusive India.

Is there a name to this alliance that is ready to be launched?

Yes, it will be called India Deserves Better, or IDB: a large and loose coalition of the people and groups mentioned above.

And it is being led by the doyens of the last big anti-corruption movement, India Against Corruption, namely noted public litigation lawyer Prashant Bhushan and psephologist and activist Yogendra Yadav. The IAC had challenged the Congress-led UPA government in 2013; the Congress was eventually defeated in the ensuing election in 2014.

Both Bhushan and Yadav were also founding members of Swaraj India after they were expelled from Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party under very acrimonious circumstances. If you recall, Bhushan was a member of Team Anna in the IAC movement led by Anna Hazare. Yadav too was at the forefront of the Anna protests, which also led to the birth of the AAP in politics.

It’s not the first time that one has heard of the call ‘India Deserves Better’.

Well, if there’s any strategy for innovation and disruption by the opposition, can political strategist Prashant Kishor be far behind? Perhaps the first time the call for “India Deserves Better” was given was by Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi when, in a letter addressed to Modi in February 2021, she wrote about the rising fuel prices, loss of jobs and wages, and accused the Modi government of profiteering by levying high prices. She declared forcefully that India deserves better.

Obviously, at that time, Kishor was in pitched talks with the Congress’s 3G – Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka – to chalk out a strategy to restructure and revitalise the party, and this call would have been his input. However, Kishor’s plans for the Congress soon went up in smoke and he walked out to hitch his fortunes to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.

In fact, it seems to be a pet call for Kishor, who used it often even a year before, in March 2020, when he slammed the Modi government for botching up its Covid response with the lack of any facilities during the national lockdown. “India deserves better,” he had declared then.

What’s the strategy of IDB? Hasn’t the call for rebooting secularism, etc been sneered at and fallen on deaf ears so far?

The plan is to challenge and change the game to civil society’s advantage in a new, forceful and effective way so as to counter the RSS and its whole ecosystem – from the hundreds of Sanghs and Sanghatans that have been unleashed to attack any and every voice that challenges Hindutva forces, to its social media bots and paid followers. For long, the non-Hindutva side has been overwhelmed and helmed in by the strident, domineering, screeching mob swamp of public discourse.

It’s time to reclaim and reshape the future, says a member. The time has come to challenge the RSS’s divisive agenda in public discourse and in society.

But goons have been used to crush dissent in, say, campuses before, as revealed by the horrific incident in JNU on New Year’s Day in 2020 and the police violence in the Jamia University library.

Of course, violence cannot be met with violence. But mobilisation of community groups – NGOs, social media activism, citizen movements, fundraising, crowdsourcing, community building, forging alliances, even hashtag advocacy – is the way forward to target state authority.

The IDB will demand answers from the district, state and central authorities and lead the way to put every word and action of the present government through the scrutiny of the constitution.

If opposition parties that challenge the Modi government are up and kicking, civil society will play an equally critical role of defiance and influence in the social sector.

The Modi government has cracked down on civil society over the years, whether it’s arresting young climate activist Disha Ravi or throwing renowned academics and human rights activists – from Sudha Bharadwaj to Varavara Rao and others to Father Stan Swamy, who died in custody – in prison.

Of course, even journalists who have exposed the state have been thrown in prison. They have been picked up and chosen for their significance and influence, whether among Dalits or in small-town India.

Perhaps the arrests of activists, students, journalists and members of civil society was a deadly message to the rest to shut up or face jail. Because a pattern has clearly emerged on how people have been picked and chosen from various parts of the country to devastating effect.

Is it also why 6,000 NGOs today have lost their FCRA licence?

Well, the home ministry under Amit Shah did not renew the FCRA registrations of at least 169 organisations, including Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity; the rest did not apply for renewal. NGOs are independent of the government and do charitable work, with foreign funding too (FCRA licence allows it) amongst the poorest and most underprivileged section – from tribal and gender justice, health, education and other critical sectors. Stopping funds will break the back of any organisation doing humanitarian work.

How will IDB handle this backlash from the Modi regime?

It’s precisely why IDB is not revealing the names of the people involved yet, whether from Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bengal or Kerala (watch this space). But it’s really about mobilising people’s movements and supporting independent groups that will whip up questions and demand answers, and insist that the government plays by the rule book of the constitution.

The India Deserves Better coalition is set to launch by the end of the month.