Is this the nation you want India to be? By Namit Arora!

As I read the Twitter thread in my tweet river, I found the prognostication by Namit vibrating with the thoughts and feelings I have been carrying for over two decades, having experienced Gujarat earlier and the rabid rise the nation has witnessed under the current leadership in the last 8 years.

I just felt blogging this thread, lest it should be lost in the ocean of Twitter clutter…

Thanks Namit. Shall read your books too, I am sure so much there, that you captured, as a technocrat and author, as a keen observer of the society, politic and the world!

India: A Forecast 🧵
By Namit Arora @namitArora0 on twitter
Writer, Humanist, TravelPhotographer
Ex. SiliconValley. Alum IIT Kharagpur!

Author :
1. Indians : A brief history of a Civilization
2. The lottery of birth
3. A Californian Story

India is on a sinister path, much darker than most worried citizens foresaw in 2014. Things have gone downhill rather fast. So what do I see as the near-term outlook (5–7 years) for India? I offer my provisional thoughts in this thread. Hope I’m wrong. (1/20)

I see a bleak economy. Its key features: anemic growth, rising deficits, falling rupee; crony-corporation-led model of growth; chronic joblessness & under-employment; auctioning of the public sector; shortage of real skills despite paper degrees; growing inequality. (2/20)

The economy is being run by unqualified hacks high on simplistic ‘privatization’, amid stifling authoritarian command, mixing the worst impulses of technocrats & nationalists. I see a demographic time bomb (not dividend), with skewed sex ratio & few females in labor force. (3/20)

To mitigate electoral blowback, we’ll see more populist welfare/handouts, sold as largesse of Party honcho. The Party will also keep redirecting public concern by intensifying sectarian strife through fear of Muslims, Hindu pride, mythic national glory, Pak-bashing, etc. (4/20)

Indeed, we’ll see aggressive, Hindutva-led polarization and fascist mobilizing against Muslims and ‘anti-nationals’ in up to a dozen states. It’ll turn on endlessly manufactured issues, of the sort we’re seeing, to cynically incite and keep the communal strife simmering: (5/20)

Hijab in schools; azaan from mosques; namaz in public; halal as economic jihad; land jihad; cheering for the wrong cricketers; dietary moral policing, esp. during Hindu festivals; removing Urdu from public spaces; bogey of Muslim ghuspathiye & love jihad; etc, etc. (6/20)

More divisive issues yet to be dreamed of will join older Hindutva agendas—led by lumpen mobs, hateful propaganda, fake news, and manufactured historical grievances—many of them brewing for a century, first inspired by racist European ethno-nationalisms. (7/20)

The police, working with Hindu mobs & militias wielding pistols, trishuls, and JSRs, will produce more oppressive, one-sided police action against Muslims; more UAPA incarcerations, with colluding/ spineless courts, where most law professionals have already gone saffron. (8/20)

Socio-economic boycott of Muslims will escalate, as will open apartheid in housing/ rentals/ jobs. Most Hindus—though opposed by a notable minority among them—will happily or silently support the marginalization of Muslims & jailing of critics without trial. (9/20)

Hindutva may downplay caste divisions, but its model of Hindu unity relies on weaponizing Hindus against Muslims, and turning India into a cauldron of religious hate. It’s also distracting from, and successfully overshadowing, people’s economic/ aspirational grievances. (10/20)

How long will NRIs—in western, plural, liberal democracies—fail to see through the false facade of his oratory & remain hypocritically supportive of his brutal regime that’s systematically gutting democracy & the rule-of-law? He personifies ‘muh mein ram, bagal mein …’ (11/20)

Recently in MP, a govt. bulldozer razed, with apparent impunity and mob support, both the shop and the home of a Muslim man who dared to enter into a relationship of mutual love with a Hindu woman. No blowback or recompense. This is who we have become. (12/20)

We’ll see more Hindu mobs—chauvinists, dolts, bullies, fanatics, fascists—armed with pistols & trishuls, high on violent millenarianism and muscular Hindu pride and domination. They are now even indulging in ‘compensatory’ desecrations of mosques/ dargahs. (13/20)

We’ll see more rabid dharam sansads; our media channels are already not much behind the caliber of RTLM radio of ’93–’94 Rwanda. These divisive forces may well crack, burn, & wreck India—making it a future case study of how societies go terribly wrong. (14/20)

We’ll see Muslims forced further into ghettos, poverty, and civic exclusion; they’ll face more frequent arson, violent vigilante ‘justice’, deadly communal riots and pogroms (some urban quarters/addresses are already being marked & mapped out, as if with yellow stars). (15/20)

Muslims will be provoked into response, escalating the conflict. We’ll see attacks on the few to instill fear in the many; persecution of ‘fifth column traitors’/‘urban naxals’ by organs of state, via tax raids or prison, w/ most victims forgotten amid mounting tragedies. (16/20)

The moral degradation of the much-vaunted ‘spiritual/dharmic Hindus’—long politically immature, gullible, illiberal, mired in inferiority complexes—is turning out to be an amazingly low-friction affair, at least for the clear and growing majority of them, esp. UCs. (17/20)

Climate change will only make things harder: More crop failures, extreme weather events, internal mass migrations => xenophobic politics. More ecological distress, air pollution, water woes. With heat waves, ‘wet-bulb temperature’ will rudely enter public awareness. (18/20)

A new reality dawns, in which the barbarians aren’t at the gates but are emerging vertically, as if from the trapdoors, all around us in our streets, homes, offices. This is the time to take stock, regroup, and prepare for a whole new battle for the soul of our society. (19/20)

Hope lies in movements that resist this fascist turn. Think anti-CAA protests, the farmers’ movement. ✊🏼 Political opposition needs to get its act together fast. World needs to wake up to this far more debilitating virus—a social virus—that’s ravaging India. (20/20)