 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are going to discuss today, before we start the Bandar Pradesh and Rajasthan review, which we will do with you, the latest meeting that the Prime Minister held and also his announcement regarding the satellite, which we claim to have shot down. See by the atmospherics, the talk of the Prime Minister as if Pakistan versus India is election in India, not there is an election in India, which is very little to do with Pakistan, but has to do with the people of India. And this entire attempt to get Pakistan into the Indian election, I think the atmospherics actually even started before he spoke. You know, the entire country was sort of sitting on the edge of the chair, because first you had an announcement by the Prime Minister himself on the social media saying, watch out, I'm going to come with a very important thing. So when you say that in the middle of the election, and we have the Cabinet Committee on Security That was later, that was immediately after. So first you said, okay, he's coming out with something, what does that mean? You know, and obviously all kinds of doomsday scenarios were being shared. And then it was that the Cabinet Committee on Security is meeting, which made it even worse. And the kind of fear that was generated in the middle of an election. And then it was announced that he would come on at quarter to 12, and he came on finally at 12.20. So there was that waiting period in between. So, you know, all the atmospherics were created before. I mean, it's very rarely that when a Prime Minister says that he's going to address the nation, it's at eight o'clock. So it is at eight o'clock. It isn't at nine o'clock. So if it is at nine o'clock, it means that something terrible might be happening. So nobody knew what it was. And then he comes on and then he makes the statement of Margaraya, a satellite without telling us what that satellite was. So it was left to you and me to decide whether that satellite was Chinese or whether it was Pakistani or it was some hostile thing coming into India, some terrorist module as it were. And actually it was our own, right? Yeah, it was an old satellite because we were testing the anti-satellite technology as it were. And, you know, we have seen these atmospherics earlier, of course, in a completely different context when we had the Mangalyan and the Isro Chief was standing next to the PM, but PM sort of took all the credit, which actually was for a program which was much longer before his time as PM, but he appeared to appropriate the entire credit of that. And yesterday, Mr. Koreshi, the former election commissioner, said normally after the model code of conduct, these things should have been with consultation of the EC. And generally, the EC's position is that this is something which does not need the minister. It can be done by the department concerned. There people can announce once the model code of conduct is concerned, this should not really, though he didn't say outright this, this should not really be something in which the political authority should announce because elections are all. And the other thing that came out that the PMO did not ask or did not consult the election commission or tell them, inform them that this was going to be done. So, in some sense, if not the letter, but the spirit of the model code of conduct. Yes, and apart from that, the model code of conduct, yeah, it's the spirit really because he hasn't maybe violated the letter as it were. And he could have spoken to a couple of the opposition leaders and told them that this is happened and I want to make the announcement, you know, though, of course, why he would want to make the announcement only he knows. But it hasn't really played down because I think the hype that he himself generated was so high and the expectations went all crazy because of that hype that eventually it was like almost like a mouse that roared, right? But you know, the yesterday's speech in Barrett, it's also very interesting because this is the game that has been played in earlier elections, Gujarat elections, making Pakistan the opposition and not the internal opposition in the country as if the election is about Pakistan, not about India. Why does Pakistan have to figure as the key issue, whether it is Gujarat, 2000X, 2000Y and again in 2014 in the national elections and now again 2019 seems to be one agenda for Mr. Modi, which is only Pakistan. We are voting only on Pakistan in India. We don't have the Indian issue. Yeah, Pakistan is a v-national security, v-kismir, v-muslims, you know, so that whole mix of national security which he is trying to project and that's about all that they have because if in five years you've done nothing for the farmers, you've done nothing for the students, you've created new targeted groups, you've become the nationalist versus all the other citizens of India who are anti-national, then what do you do at the end? What are you going to project? You're going to project Pakistan over and over again. It seems to be a done thing, you know. I mean, if you look at it, the South is completely not interested and they sort of decided wherever they are going. It's only in the Hindi heartland that somehow he feels he's still getting mileage out of this. Where there has been shall we say the partition trauma in some form or the other, so therefore the residents might be more in that sense. But the issue that you've already talked about that we're not talking of employment, which is something the millennials desperately need. We know now the figures of employment statistics which are suppressed by the government show that employment has been the worst for the last 15, 20 years, if not longer. We have seen agriculture really crash. Farmers are in deep agricultural distress, leaving farming with all of this to make Pakistan the election issue. And I presume that you know, in Pakistan, India becomes the issue. It's convenient to both sets of funders shall we say or across the board? Always been, always been. The fundamentalism both sides have lived off each other and which is why so many years down in decades down the line over 70 years, we've not been able to resolve this because the fundamentalists always playing this game. But you know, there was another thing in this mirrored speech, which was, which is also setting the tone of now his entire election campaign. There's a certain baseness and this attack on the opposition of Shahrab, you know, Shahrab, which he said about the three political parties who are contesting in it's very, very low coming from the Prime Minister of India because he's supposed to keep the whole discourse at a certain level. You can attack Mayavati and Ajit Singh and Akhilesh Yadav on issues, you know, and if you have issues, attack them. But don't say the share of Sir of Sapa and Rao of Rashtri Jantadal and this thing of Akhilesh, of Mayavati, the Ba becomes Shahrab and Shahrab means you have to keep away from it. You have the Prime Minister exhorting a crowd to do this about legitimate, valid opposition. You don't have any issues to hit them with it. I mean, how can you do this? So for me, that was, you know, that was really showing where the discourse is going. There's going to be this national security in Pakistan and there's going to be this rather base. I won't even call it vicious attack on the opposition. Well, what in school parlance would have called mean? There's a meanness to this discourse that there is no larger vision or the grace that we expect from a Prime Minister. And he's not just a minister. He's supposed to represent the nation. And in that seat, even when he's contesting or he's in a lecture. To keep a certain dignity, to give a level of the discourse, how can you take it to a level which, you know, some of those very sad MLAs and MPs do at times or their workers do actually. But coming back to Madhya Pradesh, it's a very interesting issue that we see when you talk about the number of seats with Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, we are talking of 54 seats. Out of that 52 were with the BJP in 2014. Only two in Madhya Pradesh were run by the Indian National Congress. If we flip to the 2018 elections, the assembly elections and we see that then there is a loss of seats, 22 seats, the BJP is going to lose just simply based on 2018 figures. If you take that as a base, so there is going to be a loss of about 20 seats that we are going to see for the BJP. If we take the 2018 figures as the base and we don't expect a swing this way or that way, because they're very close to 2018, we are saying the elections. But there's just a rider there, because even in the assembly elections, when the reporters went out, particularly in Rajasthan, everybody was voting for the Congress and the assembly was talking of the BJP and Modi for 2019. So a lot of people were also saying that. Now, how much that plays? There is a possibility that it might not be exactly sort of converted into parliamentary seats as we saw in 2018. The flip side of that is they have lost state power, meaning they're not in state governments. So their power of patriotism has declined to some extent and the power of patriotism for the Congress has increased because they hold the state governments. So there is that element also that enters the fray. That's why we said, okay, we can't predict what the swing is going to be. But if the 2018 holds, taking the fact, the Modi factor, taking the factor, they have lost the state governments, this is we can say this. But the interesting point is not that. Yes, there will be some losses for the BJP for sure. How much we don't know. They're certainly not going to touch the 2014. But the interesting point is, if we go to the next slide, this is the interesting issue that you will see that if the UP Alliance, which has not taken place, we hope or we think it might still do, but very bleak at the moment, you don't very bleak chances at the moment. But if a similar alliance have actually taken place in Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan, the BJP would have come down from 215 out of the 52 seats it held. And actually, Rajasthan, they've got only five seats out of the 25. This is where the BSP and the Congress makes a huge difference. Of course, also this is the whole thing about coalition politics, which people don't always understand, because we tend to look at only statistics. There is a certain confidence that is generated amongst the voter when parties come together, particularly in large of informations with the larger parties, which is why you had the BJP always rushing to make a coalition earlier in Vajpayee's time and similarly others. I feel they realize the importance of the coalitions even more and the fact that they can say 50 parties are with us. It creates a certain feel on the ground, particularly amongst fan-sitters. But you see, but this is even without that. This is the sheer voting arithmetic. You see what happens is SP and BSP have no say parliament seats in these two states. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But if they come together, 5%, 7% vote. That's exactly the same thing. It's a confidence, it's a certain assimilation. Simple numbers. Yeah. Just adding the numbers, the 5% is a huge number when it comes to a seat. So then it can be even more than that. So this is what I'm saying. It comes to what was 1312 split amongst the Congress and the BJP in Rajasthan. If there are SP, BSP doesn't come with Congress, becomes now 520. Now that is the kind of swing and Bandar Pradesh 1019, because Bandar Pradesh essentially BSP has certain pockets which have joined UP, but beyond that over larger parts of Bandar Pradesh, they don't really have that sway. They have bigger, bigger, bigger pockets in Rajasthan. So it's interesting what you said the coalition politics has one to the confidence what you said, but also to smaller numbers coming together with other numbers makes a huge difference. And this is the reason that if you see the BSPs anger about the Congress is not just about UP. It was that the Congress had actually looked at Bandar Pradesh in Rajasthan. Of course, it started there. They were asking for a few seats, you could give it to them. It didn't really mean anything. And this is the kind of difference it would have made here. And I think we said at that time, that it's going to now impact very, very adversely on UP, which it has, because that's the way Mayawati functions. Now, you know how she functions. You can't say that at this stage you're going to function another way. You didn't know that. Yeah. And this thing is that Bandar Pradesh, Rajasthan put together the Congress, if it had gone with BSP and SP, at least with the BSP would have gained 10 to 15 seats. So what BSP was asking was comparatively marginal, but the difference it would have made would have been huge. And this is something which the Congress leadership does not seem to understand. And we have to give the devil his due. The BJP is able to understand. Which I, it takes me back, you know, a long time to Advani before the NDA was formed. And we ran into him at the BJP headquarters. And I was asking him usual. And then he was in a very bad mood. And he says, you know, you guys think that you can isolate the BJP. And you feel that all these opposition people can isolate us. And the thing they have done that, we're going to prove them wrong. And he then started working very systematically on building a coalition. I mean, the whole man realized he wasn't that young even then. And built that coalition, made it the NDA, came to power with Vajpayee. And it's a different story altogether. But he worked. I mean, he's such an arrogant guy who couldn't talk to anybody always, you know, unlike Vajpayee. But he worked systematically because he realized the importance of the coalition after the National Front government and the United Front government had come in and actually managed to rule for a short while. And that lesson, somehow the Congress is finding very difficult to learn. Somehow thinks that the failure of the BJP would propel them back into power. And they would just have to play a waiting game and really do nothing more. That seems to be their logic. I can't understand their logic otherwise. And these kind of coalitions would have made such a difference in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, even if it had not made a difference in terms of seats, what many of us who've been covering politics were writing at that time, it would make a difference in terms of acceptance, of credibility, of trust, of confidence, which are all very important at a time when all your propaganda is against that. You know, it's shut up. It's trying to destroy this. And the Prime Minister doesn't call it Mahagand Bandhan. He calls it Milavad. Milavad. Tukritukre gang is one of the people called this lot of people, parties. Thank you very much Seema for being with us. Thank you very much for watching NewsClick. Do keep watching this and our other episode.