Why Did The Prime Minister Loose His Cool When Asked A Question About Adani?

The only time Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost his equilibrium at the joint press conference with President Donald Trump was when a journalist asked Modi if “Adani” had come up for discussion in the talks with President Trump. Visibly disturbed, Prime Minister told the journalist tersely that when two countries held talks, private individuals do not become subjects for discussion— not in so many words but somewhat in that fashion.

Prime Minister Modi, for all his negotiating skills, as asserted by President Trump, is not used to fielding awkward questions. And Gautam Adani happens to be one of those “private individuals” who upsets Modi’s applecart. The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) was already on to the controversial topic and Modi shouldn’t have lost his bonhomie.

But often times, Prime Minister Modi does give the impression that democratic to and fro does leave him up the creek without a paddle. Maybe, the question should have been asked of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who was in Munich when Modi was in Washington.

Jaishankar was at a panel discussion on ‘Live to Vote Another Day: Fortifying Democratic Resilience’, at which the EAM took the fortifying defence that the West should stop treating democracy as a “Western characteristic.”

As far as Jaishankar was concerned, India had more democracy at the tip of its small digit than the West ever had on its thumb. Said more or less in the same vein. Other luminaries at the Munich Security Conference included Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, US Senator Elissa Slotkin and Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowsk.

And EAM Jaishankar differed with the other panelists, asserting that democracy wasn’t in “trouble globally”, citing India as a case study. Democracy thrived in India. “This, the mark you see on my nail, is a mark of a person who has just voted. We just had an election in my state (Delhi). Last year, we had a national election. In Indian elections, roughly two-thirds of the eligible voters vote. At the national elections, (out of) the electorate of about 900 million, about 700 million voted. We count the votes in a single day.”

EAM Jaishankar was in Munich and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington DC with democracy on the anvil at both places. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not Press-friendly even in the best of times, even at the best of places. The USA is touted to a beacon of democracy, even at in those times when power, it is said, goes into somebody like President Trump’s head.

“From the time we started voting in the modern era, 20 percent of more people vote today than they did decades ago. So, the first message is that somehow democracy is in trouble globally, worldwide, I am sorry, I have to differ with it. I mean, right now, we are living well. We are voting well. We are optimistic about the direction of our democracy and for us democracy is actually delivered,” S. Jaishankar said, adding significantly that “nobody disputes” the poll results.

O! Yeah? Most everybody distrusts the Electronic Voting Machine. And India’s Opposition cannot stop haranguing the EVM for all the ills of democracy. Which world is EAM S Jaishankar living in? Besides, holding elections isn’t the end-all of democracy.

American Senator Slotkin diverted to “democracy doesn’t put food on your table” and Jaishankar countered with “actually, in my part of the world, it does because we are a democratic society, we give nutrition support, and food to 800 million people and for whom that is a matter of how healthy they are and how full their stomachs are. The point I want to make is look different parts of the world are going through different conversations. Please do not assume that this is a kind of universal phenomenon, it is not.”

Quite frankly, democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch is “800 million people getting nutrition support”, a new definition…we think of democracy as a universal aspiration, ideally a reality, but at least an aspiration, in large part because India chose a democratic model after independence and it chose a democratic model because we had fundamentally a consultative pluralistic society.”

Holding forth on the West “treating democracy as a Western characteristic”, EAM Jaishankar insisted that India, even with all the challenges had stayed true to the democratic model. “When you look at our part of the world, we are pretty much the only country that has done that. So, I think this is something the West should look at because if you do want democracy eventually to prevail, it (is) important the West also embraces the successful models outside the West.”

The difference between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is that while Prime Minister Modi specializes conveying through acronyms, expecting people to break the alphabet soups up and understand them threadbare, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar dwells deep and then, with all the punctuation marks at his command, gets down to explain the nitty-gritty.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, the super-diplomat would not have been rattled by the Adani question thrown at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was clearly rattled, unlike President Donald Trump who replied to an awkward question with the answer that the “accent stumped him!” Final statement: Democracy for India’s Great Unwashed is using his vote to elect his government and democracy for the chosen few like Gautam Adani is to reap the liberties and riches afforded by democracy. (IPA Service)