Sinha versus Sinha

No one should be surprised at the meretricious ploy of asking a son (Jayant) to attack the father (Yashwant Sinha). This kind of cleverness has become the signature tune of the Modi regime; and, most clinically disinterested outsiders and many  level-headed blokes inside are in agreement that precisely it is this preoccupation with image-manufacturing over capacity-building that has brought the economy to the current sorry state. Before Mr Yashwant Sinha went public with his scathing analysis of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s innings at North Block, two other in-house experts — S Gurumurthy and Subramanian Swamy — have also expressed their reservations about the wisdom of demonetisation.

Perhaps the only silver lining in this son-being-asked-to-attack-the-father manoeuvre is that for the first time in three years the BJP finds itself in the throes of a kind of internal debate. It is obvious that the criticism of the Finance Minister is really an indirect indictment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. It is not that the entire BJP is sold lock, stock and barrel on Modi’s personality cult. As long as he was able to win votes in state after state, the internal critics felt discouraged. Now with a Lok Sabha election not being far away, the BJP political crowd is making its own calculations.  

Not all in the BJP  would be thrilled with Jayant Sinha’s defence. The core of Jayant’s defence is that short-term pains must be endured  to completely transform the economy. Reflecting the government’s thought-process, the son’s argument is a tautological canting of the “New India” mantras: “a much more equitable” India will enable “all Indians to lead a better life”.  Yashwant Sinha has not questioned the moral urgency of making India a less inequitable place; what he has questioned is the record and ability of the Modi government to undertake wise economic decision-making. Yashwant Sinha was finance minister of India twice, though the two stints were under very different circumstances. His indictment of the Modi government was disturbing enough, but the Modi sarkar’s stratagem of laughing the father out of town by using his son is chillingly troublesome. India finds itself less sanguine after this Sinha versus Sinha saga.