Modi 2.0 a virtual horror for people: Sitaram Yechury

Yechury called for building a resistance to 'defeat this assault on the Indian Republic and our people'

CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury has claimed that the last two years of the Narendra Modi government have been a "virtual horror" for people and the Constitutional Republic, as the dispensation has been preoccupied with relentlessly pursuing the "RSS project" of Hindutva rather than fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yechury's scathing criticism comes in an article 'Two Agonising Years of Devastation' in the upcoming issue of CPI(M) mouthpiece 'Peoples Democracy' in which he also said that the decisions to allow Kumbh Mela and the way election campaign for the state Assembly elections were conducted "accelerated community transmission" of the virus infection.

He also referred to the "fanciful projects like the bullet trains, even though unrealisable, gigantic statues and the redevelopment" of the Central Vista, which he said are "all reminiscent of Hitler’s Dome in Berlin that was to highlight his fascist rule".

"The last two years have been a virtual horror for the people and our constitutional republic," Yechury wrote highlighting the need for building a resistance to "defeat this assault on the Indian Republic and our people".

Citing the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's special status and passage of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, he said the last two years saw the "consolidation of the process, with renewed vigour, put in motion seven years ago", of the realisation of the RSS project of converting India into their "conception of a rabidly intolerant, theocratic, fascistic Hindu Rashtra".

Read | India’s Covid-19 crisis shakes Modi’s image of strength

Emphasising that the Opposition demands to take adequate measures were met with "general disdain", he said Modi government's "pre-occupation had never been combating the pandemic in right earnest and saving people's lives but on continuing to relentlessly pursue the unfolding of the RSS project".

He accused the Modi government of abdicating its responsibility at the start of the second wave by passing the burden on to the state governments without offering any financial packages, and blaming the people for their neglect of precautions. "The net result was people dying gasping for breath; shortages of crucial life-saving medicines and an acute shortage of hospital spaces and ventilators," he said.

Yechury alleged that the Modi government paid "absolutely no attention" and failed "miserably" while "desperately seeking to project himself as the ‘Vishwa Guru’, he bombastically claimed that India is saving humanity through its vaccination production".

"India has today the morbid record of having the highest number of daily deaths and positive cases. Such has been the disaster of Modi’s Covid management. It could not protect lives and could not even arrange for a solemn and dignified funeral of the dead. The gory visuals of dead bodies floating on rivers, particularly Ganga and the mass funerals are a reflection of this macabre dance of death that this government has brought about on the country and the people," he wrote.

He said there is an "abject refusal" to provide relief to the people by procuring vaccines from all sources and to ensure a free, universal mass vaccination drive all across the country. "The truth remains: Indian people can save themselves only when the Modi government can be forced to launch such a vaccination drive on a war footing while providing the needed monetary and food relief," he added.