Seven years of Modi govt: Horror and devastation mark Modi govt 2.0, says Yechury

As the Modi government completed seven years in office amid the raging Coronavirus pandemic, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury launched a stinging attack on it, terming the last two years of the government as the “years of horror and devastation.”

Yechury in an article titled “Two agonizing years of devastation” – which will be made public on May 30 – looked into the last seven years of the Modi government, examining how its Hindutva ideology had destroyed Indian democracy and proved devastating for the Indian polity and society.

Yechury, while calling out mismanagement of the pandemic by the govt, said the priority of the government was to fulfil RSS’ project even though people were dying for the want of oxygen and beds at hospitals.

Yechury, who lost his son to COVID, said that the Modi government had abdicated its responsibility when the second wave of the pandemic hit the country.

He said, “As the second wave started viciously, the Modi government abdicated its responsibility by passing the burden on to the state governments without offering any financial packages and blaming the people for their neglect of precautions. The net result was people dying gasping for breath; shortages of crucial life-saving medicines and an acute shortage of hospital spaces and ventilators.”

“India has today the morbid record of having the highest number of daily deaths and positive cases. Such has been the disaster of Modi’s COVID management,” he wrote.

Attacking the Modi government for ignoring forewarnings about the inevitability of the second wave, Yechury said giving permission for the Kumbh Mela and the IPL tournament were disastrous decisions which led to the spread of the virus.

“Even today, there is an abject refusal to provide relief to the people by procuring vaccines from all sources and to ensure a free, universal mass vaccination drive all across the country,” wrote Yechury.

In his piece highlighting how the Modi government has destroyed pillars of Indian democracy and the Indian Constitution, Yechury said, “The attack on the Constitution is actually an attack on the very character of independent India. The Indian Constitution gives expression to the rich plurality and diversity that defines our country and people. India’s unity can only be consolidated when the threads of commonality among this diversity are strengthened. The RSS/BJP assaults this very concept by seeking to impose a uniformity on all expressions of our diversity - linguistic, ethnic, religious etc.”

Taking a swipe at the ‘new India’ slogan coined and propagated by the Modi government, Yechury said, “This narrative of a ‘new India’ requires its own symbols be created replacing the symbols of independent India. Fanciful projects like the bullet train, even though unrealizable, gigantic statues and the redevelopment construction of the Central Vista in New Delhi are all reminiscent of the Hitler’s Dome in Berlin that was to highlight his fascist rule.”