For many months now, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP’s) attack on the opposition for what he called a ‘Revdi culture' or a culture of freebies, essentially accusing the Congress and other parties of making irresponsible promises to garner votes. Modi said freebies were “dangerous” and hampered the nation’s development.
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Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/in-india-modis-welfare-shift-towards-freebies-and-caste-census-1.99298124
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV
#UAEnews #India #IndiaElections
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NewsTranscript
00:00In the midst of this high-voltage assembly election campaign here in India, Prime Minister
00:08Modi made a significant announcement just days earlier. He announced that his government
00:13was extending a free food grain scheme for the poor by another five years. This will
00:18impact about 80 crore Indians. And it's important because we're not just in the middle of state
00:23polls, but just months away from the general election. This is important because it also
00:28reflects that the BJP is looking to counter a strong narrative from the opposition on
00:33another key issue that's likely to dominate the next election, which is the demand for
00:38a caste census. This is a tricky issue for the BJP that has actually opposed a national
00:42caste census because of its own politics and its own view on this. But it's been treading
00:49very carefully because they know that they could lose the support of backward castes
00:54if they don't treat this with the caution that it deserves. Therefore, they need to
00:58look at other issues that would, in a sense, be out of the box, that would distract from
01:05the caste census issue. And free food grains, welfare schemes are certainly a way of doing
01:10that. It's also ironic because the Prime Minister has been leading the attack on the opposition
01:15over the last year or so against what he's called a rave-y culture or a culture of freebies
01:20that he's even described as dangerous for India's democracy and development. Today,
01:25nobody in the BJP or anyone really within the ruling establishment is describing this
01:30announcement as a freebie, although it clearly is one. How it impacts the course of politics
01:37will be important over the next few months because this is not going to end here. It's
01:41clear that in order to counter the caste census narrative, the BJP will have more announcements
01:47up its sleeve.