LUCKNOW: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is his own star campaigner, moving the goal posts rapidly, to accomodate new fears and new anger arising from the demonetisation of 86% of the currency.

His Moradabad address at the BJP’s parivartan rally may or may not have made sense to the people gathered there, but it spelt out a new strategy devised to address the frustration of the poor and keep them away from the streets. More so in Uttar Pradesh, the crucial state that the PM’s so called master stroke was intended to target in the first instance---by doing away with the Opposition’s black money before the polls by demonetising the higher currency notes.

UP districts have dissolved into chaos since, with long queues and harassment being reported from virtually all districts. The RSS, also worried about the impact on the ground, has come out in full force to carry out a house to house campaign in a bid to convince the people that the measure to ban the currency notes is ‘pro people.’ And that they should wait with their jan dhan accounts as the government plans to fill these, with all the surplus money that they claim the government will now get.

PM Modi in his Moradabad speech added to this, but with a twist. Referring to rumours---yet to be substantiated by the government in real terms---that the ‘corrupt’ as he called them have now stashed some of their ill gotten wealth in these Jan Dahn accounts, PM Modi urged the people to hold on to the money. “Let these corrupt people hover around your doors asking for it, but hold on to it, And if they harass you tell them you will write to Modi”, he said. And then added that he was devising ways to help ensure that these corrupt people were brought to task, and made to pay for the money that was rightfully that of the poor.

The speech was words. Words that make little sense to the economists and the Opposition, but then PM Modi is looking at the voters not at the intellectuals. Almost clubbing the corrupt and critics in the same category, he urged the poor to stand with him in his fight against corruption. He was master orator at his best, as he relied on oratory and words to convince the voter, without a single fact or figure to substantiate and justify the reason for throwing the country into financial chaos.

Conjuring up populist visions of the crores stashed under beds, that he had now brought out, the Prime Minister presented himself---not even the BJP or the RSS---as the messiah of the poor, the one man who every corrupt man was terrified of, and the one man who was determined the end poverty starting with UP.

He ended with an appeal to all to move to a cashless system, to use their phones for procurements, saying that if Indians could vote through the electronic machines, this was just a button away. Not difficult, and very possible.

The RSS cadres moving through the small towns of UP are propagating almost the same:

  1. PM has struck at the very root of black money;
  2. PM has ended corruption;
  3. The money coming back into the banks will be taken away from the rich and given to you, the poor;
  4. These black marketeers have been hit but you, our citizens will soon find money in your bank accounts;
  5. Be patient, give a little to get all----as indeed said PM Modi just yesterday when he said that this was the last line the poor would stand in.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi party has barely reached the villages with a counter campaign if any. The Congress is more visible according to reports, but again more so in the towns. And it has been virtually left to the Bahujan Samaj party to counter the BJP/RSS campaign with the reduced resources at its command.

Prime Minister Modi is not really bothered about Parliament, where the Opposition is trying to draw a statement of facts not perceptions. His battle is on the street, and for the street where the propaganda does not have to be exact, far from it, but just has to work in persuading the people that one, demonetisation has actually crippled black money and corruption; and two, the PM is with them in their glee that the rich and the bad have been taken care of. And that finally, the queues do not matter as at the end of it, the poor will be ahead.

PM Modi himself is a master orator, and very convincing from the ramparts. Warnings being given out by economists, now even across the world, with cold facts mean little to the street that stares at PM Modi mesmerised by his style, and when doubts creep in the RSS moves to tackle these with good impact.

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