Ghost of demonetization hovered over most parts of thecountry when a tweet from none other than the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at11.23 am on Wednesday. Its subsequent promotion on media unnerved the generalpublic and commentators of all sorts were on tenterhooks to strike the audiencewith their opinions.
Firstly, twitteratis were immediately engaged in guessinggame dishing out their own speculative theories. However, the general publictook time to get hold of the message as it percolated down to most of them throughradio, television and through other social and digital media channels. Majorityof the general public was once again fearing something parallel todemonetization. The delay in the address by one hour gave vent to the fear ofthe general public that they would be grilled once again in the name ofdefending nation.
Remarkably, the prime minister failed to strike his own timing of the unprecedented address as he had specifically mentioned in the tweet that he would be addressing the nation at around 11:45 AM – 12.00 noon with an important message.
Missing his own set of timing by none other than the prime minister is not a good omen. Had somebody else in his secretariat announced the timing of the address, the delay would have not mattered.
Precisely, the whole population in the country irrespective of caste, creed and political affiliations was put on high alert. The social and digital media was abuzz with comments where most of them were behaving as if they were at the brink of facing hell.
Surprisingly, many pictures were uploaded on the social media channels showing a spurt in rush of people at bank branches at many places across the country. Even long queues were seen at ATM locations as people were fearing another spell of demonetization.
Now coming to the second part of the tweet, which reads: “Do watch the address on television, radio or social media.”
It was for the first time in 5 years that the prime minister Narendra Modi was seeking audience for himself. So far we had never come across a statement where the prime minister was asking people to watch him or listen to him.
What does this indicate? The Prime Minister to address the nation in the middle of an election campaign may be unprecedented, but the content of the tweet, particularly the second part, reflected a sort of nervousness and fear enveloping the prime minister.
In other words, his tweet unleashed fear in populations across the country and at the same time his tweet reflected his nervousness, which is first time during his prime ministership, while facing the elections.
There’s no denying the fact that Modi was undisputed king ofcommon masses when he was driven into power in 2014 elections. Such was hispopularity that we saw people dedicating temples to him at various places inthe country.
Now why this gauge of popularity is missing when the elections are few weeks away? Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was launched in August 2014 with an underline message to the unbanked households that money from government would be flowing from government to their Jan Dhan accounts.
None other than the prime minister himself in a televised address talked about getting back the black money from foreign countries and depositing it proportionately in the household accounts. it didn’t happen, except credits coming through subsidies.
Similarly, implementation of Good and Services Tax (GST) has not been taken well, as the general public feels burden of taxes and the businesses continue to struggle to fall in line with the new tax regime.
Precisely, it disrupted the pace of growth of businesses and resentment brewed up against the government all across the country. Demonetization is well known for its ill effects on the economic growth of the country and described as meaningless activity even by best rains in the country.
In the backdrop of these measures, which general public isnot ready to accept as reformative, announcing achievement of “Mission Shakti”didn’t meet public jubilation as would have been expected by the government.Above all, reputation matters.
(The views are of the author & not the institution he works for)