<http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-views> Loincloth to lion cloth <http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-views>
February 5, 2015, 12:00 am IST <http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-views>By *Bachi Karkaria* <http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/author/bachikarkaria/> in *Erratica* <http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/erratica/> *|* *BJP says India’s no longer ‘socialist’, AAP says ‘pehley’ to the poor* Model Modi has been flaunting a suit with his name emblazoned all over. No other Indian Prime Minister would have dared wear such blatant narcissism on his or her sleeve. It’s the sartorial equivalent of the ‘selfie’. And a swashbuckling act of political audacity — as much as the Ambani family occupying an entire 27-storey building was an act of socio-economic audacity. The chatterati may scoff, but the new matterati doesn’t get shirty. It’s official. The leader is no longer obliged to don the sackcloth of hypocrisy because that frayed descriptor ‘socialist’ has been dropped from the preamble of the Constitution (and ‘secular’ has managed to hang on by the foreskin of its teeth). Other people show off monogrammed cuffs or kerchieves, but our NaMo is not ‘other people’; he’s the Only One. He’s the one-man change agent who turned the tables on entrenched elites, pitchforked the Pappu-Turned-Mod to the high table, and overnight turned us from a nation of the permanently aggrieved to a nation of the terminally aspirational. So, if so many millions chant a full-throated ‘Namo-namaha’, why shouldn’t his own bandh-gala? This me-all-over suit is of a piece with the larger non-socialist agenda. Bleeding hearts are to be bypassed. In our brash, new, Modified world, we no longer have to be our brother’s keepers. Instead, we can keep all we can extract from that poor loser. We must take Gandhiji’s ‘swachhata’, but totally topple all that tripe about ‘trusteeship’. And, yes, we must replace the loin cloth with the lionising cloth of bespoke British weave. There’s no call to make a Bonfire of Vanities from our Man In Full Control. So, in this New, Improved, Sanitised India, the poor were in danger of becoming invisible. As it is, the party which coined ‘Garibi Hatao’ had been hataoed because it had championed Grab-iri instead. Our hoary USP of bijli-sadak-pani-less have-nots were being swept out of sight, but have dramatically been brought back into the reckoning with a broom. In this high-decibel Delhi election, BJP is being forced to look downwards instead of its proudly patented upward direction. Mr Modi now has a very different suit to press. *** Alec Smart said: “Getting to the root of any dodgy money is a wild ghoos chase.”
