 Welcome to NewsClick. As the year 2019 is coming to an end, it's time to really take a look at what were some of the significant changes that took place in this year alone. To talk to us about this, we're being joined with Prabir Purkayashta who's the editor of NewsClick and senior journalist Paranjay Guha Thakurtha. Prabir, you know, six months back Narendra Modi's government and the BJP has formed a government with thumping majority with a big victory and this is their second round. What do you think has changed in these six months alone? We must understand that the Modi regime, both last time as well as this time, was distinctively different from any other government we had in the past. We had Manmohan Singh and liberalisation which was a departure in some sense. We had Bajpayee who led an India government where in fact BJP did rule though with allies but those were also versions which at least kept in front that we are all secular and while we may have differences of different kinds, we still believe in the larger constitutional framework. If that wasn't so, Bajpayee's government would not have got the allies it did. This time, Modi, particularly after this round of victory where he has got a single majority, he doesn't need any other party. The BJP can rule on its own if it wants to. This time, the CMT have decided that we are going to go hard on our basic agenda which till now we have not made it so open. So, we had Kashmir, 370 being abrogated, breaking up Jammu and Kashmir into union territories, depriving them of statehood itself and then we had the Citizens Amendment Act which we now see unfolding and coupled with it the NPR, NRC, particularly the NRC coming behind the NPR and both of which have been promised as a continuum that after the CA, we will have the NRC which Amit Shah said other ministers have said. I am not going to go into the detail. I think this time we could say that there has been for the first time an assertion that we are a secular country and an assertion particularly by the youth. They are the ones who have been at the forefront. This is very significant because this is not something that has happened just like that. We have had episodic instances of youth coming on the question of corruption. India against corruption. India against corruption kind of movements. We have had for instance partially also like Navnirvan Sabiti in Gujarat or you had the JP movement particularly in Bihar. But all of it taken together this is I think significant because it is harking back to the values of the national movement which is expressed in the constitution. Inclusive state all sections of people are equal before law and this is something that we do value. It was felt that these values probably have disappeared but suddenly we find the youth as well huge sections of people who otherwise normally don't come into this are willing to take to the street along with it what the government has lost in terms of credibility is the fact that its statistics and its claims nobody believes. The fact that is the statistical part of the government seems to be withholding reports after reports trying to conceal what is the state of the economy and at the same time these things cannot be hidden forever so they are coming out. So both in terms of what the government represents a hard communal turn so to say and also losing credibility on the face of the what the statistics are of the economy. Paranjaya if I could ask you the bit about what has changed Prabir has spoken to us about that why has this change come in? Let's first look at what has changed if you look at the first six months of the Modi government the second Modi government you find that what has actually happened which was out of the ordinary first as he pointed out the Hindu rastra agenda of the Bharti janta part and the rastra ashram se vaksang has been sought to be implemented first article 370 in the Kashmir we also saw the supreme court give a judgment which was favorable for the construction of the Ram Mandir. Now these two decisions did not you know attract widespread public protest so what was there about the citizenship amendment act and the implementation of the national register of citizens that got the youth out onto the streets. If you look at what has happened recently first let's look at Maharashtra I think what surprised a lot of people was not that the pre-polar alliance between the Shiv Sena and the Bharti janta party broke up but that having broken up Mr Modi used up the powers of the cabinet late at night literally directed the president of India to sign on the dotted line and you got the governor in Mumbai to swear in Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar and that government didn't even last four days I mean that was that surprised a lot of people I mean if the Modi government or if Mr Modi and Amit Shah thought that they could do all that they did not just in Goa and Manipur what they did in Karnataka could be replicated Maharashtra they were clearly wrong so that was in a sense the first hit and and the government lost a lot of credibility I mean to put it very mildly then I think all of these accumulated to a situation where the the the the protests by young people against the citizenship amendment acts built out of the streets if the Bharti janta party thought it would be confined to northeastern India or Bengal they were wrong spread all over the country if they thought that the agitators would be focused on you know a few universities in and around Delhi and the national capital region and Aligarh Muslim University Jamia Miliya Aslamia and Jawaharlal Nehru University again they were wrong it spread like wildfire across the country so this coupled with the fact that the Indian economy is in a terrible shape I mean it's not just the rate of growth of the GDP which has slowed down as probit pointed out the credibility of the government's numbers are at at at the lowest ever I guess all-time low and and you see this is all affecting the youth at a time when half your population of 130 crore or 135 crore are people below the age of 26 your median age is 27 so the unrest of the youth is palpable evident so what people thought that the youth are are are sort of apathetic no they came out on the streets in large numbers and it was not confined to Muslim young people you saw this across communities you saw this across educational institutions including the so-called elite educational institutions the Indian institutes of technology the Indian institutes of management so I think this is something the government certainly didn't expect and and the spontaneity of the protests all of this I think are in a sense new and and to a great extent was not and was not anticipated let me put it this way at this point of time what BJP is facing is another onslaught of people's verdict people's sentiments actually where they are not being able the students the young population of this country is standing up for the fact that they are worried about whether there will be citizens of this country or not how do you view the kind of movement that we are in right now you know I would think that this movement also got the resonance which Poranjaya talked about because of the kind of repression the government let loose on the students if the kind of brutality we saw hadn't happened if all those pictures hadn't gone out and today let's face it any event anywhere in the world does get propagated widely you have social media your cell phones all of that cannot be hidden anymore so while the government may talk about violence by the perpetrators will catch them we have our video cameras we will have facial recognition we'll identify them they're speaking the language of repression but nevertheless what happened that day in Jamia and what happened later in AMU these have been flashed across the country now there is a kind of anger among the students that you try to repress something which was a protest which we have seen all the time you know okay it's unfortunate that near Jamia there was an incident where buses were burned so the first time buses have been burned public property has been destroyed and let's face it when Babri Masjid was brought down there was large-scale violence on the Masjid as well as in other places we have had communal rights in the country but what we saw that day attempt was seems to be an attempt by the police immediately to silence any protest this is the same model of operation they did in AMU and what we see in the particularly the BJP run states you see really violence being perpetrated by the state machinery in order to see that no movements or no protest takes place we have section 144 across UP this is unprecedented and if you take the Supreme Court judgment which is which was there which says there must be imminent threat of violence for it to be a reasonable restriction all through entire UP Delhi we saw peaceful protests being again stopped the right to protest comes with democracy you can say ABCD should not be done that it is violence is public property being burned and so on but you cannot say nobody has a right to protest as they have done in UP and what is interesting is though the opposition has no right to protest those who are opposing the government has no right to protest at the same time BJP is allowed to hold meetings and marches now these things I think are something which is also what is fueling the protest and that is why this is not something which is so easy to tamp down as the government believes the young India understood a majoritarian government but they had not expected this government to be authoritarian or not just majoritarian and authoritarian but downright repressive and the heavy high handedness of the police what the people of Kashmir are still going through from the 5th of August till today as we talk as the year is ending internet facilities have come and gone but most of the time it's not been there suddenly you find that it's all over Uttar Pradesh parts of the national capital and Uttar Pradesh is no ordinary state one out of six Indians live there it is India's most popular state if it was an independent country it would have been the sixth most populous country in the world now Uttar Pradesh is also the place where you have Yogi Adityanath's government which given his background and you see there the maximum number of deaths and you see there the kind of repression that has been unleashed on people and it's interesting that wherever there's a non-BJP government there the protests have been in larger numbers and also more peaceful why because the police have not gone out of their way to you know act in a completely atrocious manner. Prabhir what has brought the credibility of this government down something has changed people have flinched quite quite hard with the CAA I think there are three things to register here one is for a long time the value of a secular inclusive constitution appeared to be something which we repeated but it did not really have a resonance of the people because those were things which were taken for granted okay India is a secular republic India is supposed to in you know everybody is supposed to be equal before law this is taken for granted for the first time we had the government after Asam we saw the NRC process there which left 1.9 million out after Kashmir we saw again the government going in for something which for most people was a direct attack on the constitution. Now you know you may try to put all kinds of spin on the issue but people have understood what it means they have the example of Asam that this is a very tortuous process of trying to prove your citizenship the onus is on us to prove we are citizens there is really no document which yet has been accepted as the basis of citizenship we don't know whether it will be the Aadhar it will be the voters ID card both have been sent in Asam not to be proof of citizenship and a lot of the Indian people don't have documents so the attack on Muslims in the guys that you are not proper citizens this is something which the Muslim community knew was anticipating were talking about so they have reacted quickly for the others they have been really taken aback by the lies that the government has continuously said no no no CA has nothing to do with NRC well there are clauses over there which make it clear there is what is an illegal immigrant those clauses are changed in the CAA and they have a direct link with the what is the NRC and what is citizenship and the fact that Amit Shah said time and again Khus Petu ko bahar nikal denge will throw out the infiltrators who is an infiltrator all these things have been said in the what is called the dog whistle language where people can understand who want who know what you are talking about but you pretend it is actually neutral so I think all of that has also meant that this movement is not a movement for something this movement is for the defense of the constitution itself and this is I think a very very significant departure as I said earlier that finally people are recognizing what does a secular country mean what does a constitution mean and these things have come back into discussion which for a long time were taken for granted the constitution is not a plaque written carved in stone you know the meanings of these words I think especially to a lot of young people have today I mean they have realized what is the meaning of these words what is the meaning what is the meaning of this word secularism I mean can you get away by demonizing one out of seven individuals in this country you know can you demonize a population which is you know I mean it's only Indonesia and Pakistan which have more Muslims than India and and you see at a time when because of the excessive centralization of power and we see a concerted attempt to undermine institutions you know you views law enforcing agencies as weapons to target your political opponents not that it wasn't done before but never so brazenly that's not all whether it be the bureaucracy whether it be the military whether it be bodies like the election commission of India the reserve bank of India the central bureau of investigation and the judiciary these I mean I have lost I mean these institutions which are responsible for upholding not just democracy but maintaining social political the order of things in this country have been so undermined I think the youth today are realizing it and that's why they're coming out on the street and especially as a journalist I feel very strongly they attempt to muzzle such a large section of the media by financially squeezing them by literally threatening them and the right to free expression which is again a fundamental right article 19 one eight I mean I think young people are today also realizing what it means the what does freedom of expression mean and what it means in today's India when such a large section of the media has you know acting like advertising agents of the government in power acting like their public relations officer sections who you would earlier consider apolitical apathetic today have come out on the streets something that absolutely has struck a chord with everyone all of us is the fact that just to be able to say I refuse these are mere words and to get a latte against it or to be picked up and detained against it to instill fear in those who are protesting or are coming to register their protest to a government they have democratically elected what is the way forward as we move into 2020 you know the crystal ball is always difficult to use but one thing is I think very sure that we see cracks in the kind of media management the BJP had achieved I think that's a very good sign that is also because there is this larger resonance within the people or cutting across sections that what has gone what is being done is actually something rather toxic that you are using prevaricating lying and trying to do something else and we know what that something else is trying to disenfranchise what a section large section of the Indian population if not deprive them of the citizenship actually make them non-citizens for next 10 years or give them a second class to run around 10 years run around trying to prove their citizenship put them at a disadvantage make them insecure so they don't vote against you which is what really wants you don't want them to vote against you you don't want them to make demands so this is one part of one part of the equation the second part of it is I think the students taking to the streets and cutting across all sections and this is something which particularly this movement we have to give it to the youth it's their protest which is no more but behind that let's not also forget there is a third element I know this is not exactly the best thing to say but it is also true for the first time Muslims in India have felt they need to come out and this kind of mobilization that we are seeing I don't think we have seen in the past because they have always said that if we come out in large numbers then we will alienate other sections so we should pay a more non-visible role not invisible but not be so visible I think this time they feel they're being pushed to the wall here they're really coming out for the constitution and I think that is is creating a resonance in the sec in different sections so I think that section that is one part of it and let's not forget the economy and as people say that this economy is stupid that that if the economy falls that no government really survives or at least survives with its good will intact you know where do we go from here what Praveer has said is I not only agree with him I want to add that you know you can fool some of the people as the old saying goes it been attributed to Australia and others you can fool all the people some of the time some of the people all the time not all the people all the time you know this whole attempt to say that I can constantly divert your attention from what really concerns you whether you have a jobless future ahead whether there's going to be inflation and and and to claim that we have a monopoly on nationalism that the BJP and the RSS determines who is pro-Indian who's not and if you disagree with them and their ideology then you're a Pakistani and anti-national so this attempt to polarize I think is being resisted here. Paranjaya in fact in India right now after demonetization and the way economy is the poor cannot purchase Parle G's five rupees packet the biscuit which was poor man's biscuit which I it no longer can be purchased because that purchasing power is not there for people to buy things from the market. So the question of economy. Absolutely you before the elections before the general elections you were able to divert attention with Pulwama with Balakot how long can you continue to do that that is the question this government is not willing to admit its mistakes it's still not willing to accept that what was done three years ago on the 8th of November 2016 ruined this country that it slowed down our growth that it destroyed the livelihoods of the weakest sections of our population farmers women senior citizens children dependent on women daily wage laborers small traders small shopkeepers but I think today that attempt to keeping on fooling people is slowly falling apart and Maharashtra and of course Jharkhand indicates that you know they are not invincible these people who you know have this big macho image of themselves that somewhere along the line they are not gods these gods are feet of clay I think the youth even that section of the youth at one point of time who believed in the strong leader this big macho image of Modi I have also got completely disillusioned and so let's see what happens in 2020 thank you for Pravee thank you for Anjaye to talk to us let's not forget when India stands for voting for elections that line is secular and to maintain that vote and to maintain that mandate any government will have to think about its people and its fabric keep watching news click and a happy new year