Siddhartha Varadarajan on Modi & Covid

Siddhartha Varadarajan, American citizen and soi disant Marxist, is in the business of doubling down on his journalistic mistakes. Almost two decades after he alleged that Modi orchestrated the post-Godhra riots, as opposed to calling in the Army to end them, he is still pretending that Modi's aim is ethnic cleansing, not running the country in a clean and efficient manner. Varadarajan was not alone in getting Modi wrong. But the consequence of the Left convincing itself that Modi was Hitler was that it disappeared from Indian politics.

However, Varadarajan is still around as a journalist to mislead youth. He writes in the Wire-

To understand what Narendra Modi has done to India in the first year of his second term as prime minister, I want you to consider the contrasting fate of two young people, Amulya Leona and Anurag Thakur.
Leona, still in her teens, has been in jail for three months now, charged with sedition and other serious crimes for simply shouting ‘Long Live Pakistan’ and ‘Long Live India’ from the stage of a public event in Bangalore.

The girl, who was being paid by anti-CAA protest organizers, shouted 'Pakistan Zindabad' when standing beside Owaisi, the dynastic Muslim politician, who was outraged and had her bundled off stage into the arms of the police. The silly girl meant no harm. But her actions were those of a double-agent seeking to embarrass Owaisi and other Muslim politicians in India. Shouting 'Fire' in a crowded auditorium could cause a panicked stampede. Lives might be lost. That is why the law punishes people who shout 'Fire' in a Cinema Hall or else joke about being suicide bombers when boarding a plane. Amulya is being punished for a similar type of stupidity. The question is whether she was paid to raise this slogan or whether it was her own idea.

If Leona spoke about living, Thakur, who is junior minister of finance in Modi’s government, spoke about killing.

Thakur has been elected to the Central Parliament four times. He has the right to express the sentiments of his constituents in any terms that the law allows. Of course, any member of the Public can file a 'F.I.R' at any police station if she believes Thakur has broken the law. But the guy is smart. He knows the law. It is unlikely that he would have overstepped the mark.

From the stage of a public event in Delhi, he exhorted a crowd of Bharatiya Janata Party supporters to shout “Shoot the Traitors”.

Varadarajan, as an American citizen, may feel that traitors to India should be cuddled by Indians. However, the fact is, the majority of Indians want to see Traitors punished. It is the duty of a legislator to give a voice to the demands of the Public, in so far as this can be done in a lawful manner. Thakur, it appears, has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. 

The ‘traitors’ were not an abstraction but the women and men of Shaheen Bagh and elsewhere who had been protesting the government’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

This is Varadarajan's own view regarding the utterance of a man who is not his chum. Will a Court accept Varadarajan's interpretation? No. It is unreasonable. People in Delhi knew that Thakur did not mean that a bunch of old women, who had been lied to and who were sitting in Shaheen Bagh because they genuinely believed they themselves might be deported, were traitors. No. He meant those lying to them and who were orchestrating attacks on the police and on non-Muslims were either Traitors to India or else foreign operatives of Enemy or Terrorist organizations. Indian Law severely penalizes the actions of such people. In a violent confrontation, shoot to kill orders can be issued. In 1992, riots in Delhi were nipped in the bud because an I.P.S officer avenged the killing of a constable of his by issuing a shoot to kill order. Some twenty or thirty members of the mob died but all rioting stopped completely. 

A few days later, in fact, someone actually fired on the protestors at Jamia Millia. However, the police has yet to file a case against Thakur, let alone seek to take him into custody. “The time is not right”, a top law officer of the government told the Delhi high court when asked whether the police intended to register an FIR against the minister.

Why was the time not right? The police had taken a battering from Muslim mobs. Non Muslim mobs had retaliated and quickly gained the upper hand. It wasn't till the National Security Advisor intervened and a new Police Chief was appointed that confidence was restored. Still, if even the Muslim minority could put the Police on the run, clearly they could not afford to take on the non-Muslim majority.

Varadarajan does not get that the anti-CAA protests failed. They were expected to give a boost to Congress and the Left in the Delhi elections. But both were wiped out. Thakur's stock went up. The deeply silly Leona became emblematic of the 'Pinjra Tod' stupidity of Shaheen Bagh type protest. Girls protesting restrictive Hostel rules, 'broke their cage' but ended up in Jail.

Leona and Thakur are not alone.

Thakur is not alone because he is part of the default National party which seems destined to get a third term in office. Leona is not alone because she is in an overcrowded jail. 

Not since the emergency of Indira Gandhi have so many people across India spent so much time in custody for political reasons than in the past year, and never before has the sword of arrest and detention hung over more heads.

 Since India's population keeps increasing, we would expect, ceteris paribus, nothing but this outcome. The good news is extra-judicial killing has gone down a lot.                                         

One former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, is now into her ninth month of incarceration. 

That helps her party- which was allied with Modi's- for when elections are eventually held. Under Nehru, his pal Sheikh Abdullah spent a decade in jail. Indira too kept him in jail till he did a deal. That's how politics works in Kashmir.

At the same time, never before in independent India has there been such impunity for those connected to the establishment.

Nonsense! Indira's reign, supported by the Left, was the high water mark for such impunity. Sonia, reviving that alliance, conferred a similar impunity upon her corrupt cronies. 

If you are a member of the ruling party or support the government’s political agenda, you can advocate violence and even carry it out, spread hatred against religious minorities, humiliate and abuse the poor, without worrying about being asked to render account in a court of law.

Varadarajan, poor fellow, is shitting himself because he will have to render an account of his own efforts of a similar type in a Court of Law. 

The fact is the anti-CAA protest was supposed to be a rainbow coalition of workers and peasants and tribals and so forth. But only poor Muslim women would actually buy into that pack of lies. So, the thing backfired. The non-Muslim vote got consolidated. Muslims were left in the lurch.

In New Zealand, an Indian origin Justice of the Peace was sacked for advocating an economic boycott of Muslims in India.

So what? Being a J.P is an honorary position. 

In Uttar Pradesh, two MLAs were caught on camera doing the same thing on the ground, yet they got to keep their jobs and the police insisted there was no reason to file charges.

Why? The anti-CAA agitation has made non Muslims hate Muslims because, it seems, they object to non-Muslims gaining a safe refuge from Islamic persecution in neighboring countries. Varadarajan was part of this conspiracy. As an American citizen, he has nothing to fear. But the Indian Muslim has suffered because of his mischief. Will the Indian Courts be able to punish Varadarjan? I doubt it. By contrast, a Muslim activist who used to write for the Wire is languishing in jail. 

In many parts of India today, the right of the people to mock or even criticise their leaders no longer exists or hangs by a slender thread.

This is certainly true of Mamta's Bengal or the Shiv Sena's Maharashtra. However, Modi knows very well that writers like Varadarajan help him gain the loyalty of 'Lutyens' Delhi'. This is because we know Varadarajan's whole family. They are a bunch of corrupt cretins. 

Last week, the police in Madhya Pradesh registered a criminal case against a journalist for referring to the prime minister as a ‘gappu’, or braggart.

Anyone can register a criminal case if there is evidence that Indian Law has been broken. The post in question reads ' Gappu, Tadipar, Balatkari, aprakirtik sasanghat walo ko pare kar de to BJP suchmuch dheynisht party hai'. The meaning is that the BJP is populated by rapists and sodomites and braggarts and externed criminals. A local member of the BJP took objection and registered a case with the Police. No arrest has as yet been made. As an equally worthless journalist, Varadarajan may well object to the application of the Law to his own tribe of scribblers. But Indians like seeing journalists squirm.

In Agra, a man who called the Uttar Pradesh chief minister a ‘dog’ has been charged with sedition.

Interestingly, this was done by a female sub-inspector. It remains to be seen whether any arrest will be made. Still, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If people in New Zealand can get into hot water for a Tweet or Facebook post, so can people in India. 

Last month, a young photographer in Kashmir was threatened with arrest under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act as a terrorist for a photograph she posted on Instagram in 2018.

And German tourists keep getting thrown in jail in Greece for taking photos at the airport. The fact is, different countries have different rules regarding this sort of thing based on their own National Security considerations.

In Andhra Pradesh, a woman who asked a series of embarrassing questions about the recent industrial accident in Vishakapatnam was arrested by the police.

She wasn't arrested. She was ordered to appear to answer a case filed against her. She is supported by the opposition TDP. 

The purpose these ‘individual’ cases serve is to scare others into silence. The amended UAPA has also given home minister Amit Shah the power to designate any individual as a “terrorist” without a trial or even the filing of charges.

I think this will stand because it is foolish to say an organization can be designated terrorist but an individual can't. The fact is Terrorist organizations morph continually. Professional terrorists change their allegiance to better funded franchises.

Modi’s abject failure as an administrator is evident from the manner in which he has handled both the coronavirus pandemic and the human catastrophe he triggered by imposing a lockdown without any planning or preparation.

This is Varadarajan's own view. It appears the public disagrees. 

But for me, the disaster he has caused is the logical if hideous culmination of an underlying pathology that has come into sharp focus during the past year – his contempt for democracy.

Wonderful! Varadarajan couldn't get elected rat catcher in America. He can't run for elected office in India because he is a foreigner. But Modi keeps getting re-elected. It is Democracy which has raised him up to global status. All this in just twenty short years. Prior to being appointed C.M of Gujarat in 2000, he had never won an election. Since then, he hasn't lost a single one. Modi is the first person who couldn't afford to go to College to end up in the highest office in the land. Varadarajan thinks it is because Modi has contempt for Democracy. But we all know that Varadarajan and his ilk has contempt for 'uneducated' OBC types from mofussil towns. The odd thing is that people like me- a caste fellow a few years ahead of him at the LSE- now respect Modi and listen when he speaks whereas we feel contempt for Varadarajan who, as Jag Suraiya recalls, once asked 'who or what is a Kurmi?' Surely, this was disingenuous. Varadarajan's dad was a U.P cadre IAS officer. He himself went to Mayo. He must have known what sort of people were Kurmis. He was simply expressing his contempt for the 'great unwashed'. Brahmins like him is what turns us into DMK supporters. 

Only a leader who has that contempt – who believes he can stay in power regardless of what he does – will run the risk of not bothering to make any effort to ameliorate the suffering of millions of migrant workers, all of whom have the right to vote.

Varadarajan's contempt for the truth is what has sunk his journalistic career. He won't be remembered as a Frank Moraes or Kuldip Nayar.  He has gone in the direction of Prem Shankar Jha. But Jha, in his day, was considered an intellectual. Varadarajan was always a verbose cretin.

Modi’s disregard for democracy runs deep and wide, and extends to every institution that is meant to serve as a check and a balance to the exercise of executive power.

The opposite is the case. The reason Modi was not brought down in 2001 itself by rival factions within the Gujarat Sangh Parivar was precisely because he strengthened Institutions and delegated power. The pay-off was efficiency and voter satisfaction. Then, Gujarat began to grow at an unprecedented rate- that too in a balanced manner- because Modi was able to do a deal with the farmers and curb the greed of the Corporates. 

In his first term as prime minister, he undermined the judiciary, the Reserve Bank of India, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the country’s university system, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Right to Information, Parliament and its committees.

Nonsense! The judiciary had over reached and was bound to draw in its horns. Putting Rajan into the RBI was a stunt. It failed. The CBI was never independent. The University system had degenerated forty or fifty years ago. Right to Information was a nuisance. On the other hand, Parliamentary functioning improved because Congress and the Left continually lost seats and thus could create less and less havoc. 

In his second term, he has turned his sights on the federal nature of India’s polity.

But India has a Unitary, not a Federal, Constitution. The Center can redraw State boundaries or downgrade them to Union Territories. 

He has also gutted the Central Information Commission

which was so useless nobody had heard about it. Apparently it was created in 2005.

and further undermined the independence of the judiciary to ensure his assaults on the democratic rights of the people from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are not challenged.

Why does Varadarajan not simply say 'Modi is sexually assaulting my arsehole every night'? That would be more believable. 

Gone is the pretence of development and growth, used as a camouflage during the first term to avoid a backlash to the BJP’s communal agenda.

Gone is Varadarajan's pretence that he is only anti-Modi because Modi is a Hindu. It is now obvious that Varadarajan's rage against the BJP is caused by the horrible anal rape at Modi's hands which he has to endure every night. As a Tambram myself, I feel vulnerable. First Modi buggered Mani Shankar Aiyar but we said nothing because that Doon School asshole deserves all he gets. Then Modi sodomized Siddhartha Varadarajan. Again, we said nothing because that Mayo College asshole must be habituated to such shenanigans. What if Modi now comes for me? I went to St.Columba's and still am cherry in the anal department. Who will speak up for me? Sanjay Subhramaniyam? No. He will simply mutter into his beard about Vasco da Gama. As for his brother, he is too busy being Minister of External Affairs. Nirmala Ji, kindly save my Tambram ass from Modi's lust!

The only “accomplishments” the BJP can point to in the first year of Modi’s second term all relate to its anti-Muslim mindset. First came the gratuitous criminalisation of Muslim husbands who abandon their wives without properly divorcing them. (However, Hindu husbands who do the same have nothing to fear.)

So Modi did something for Muslim women which, Varadarajan believes, Hindu women are denied. He should try explaining this to his wife. She will slap the black off him sho' nuff.

Then on August 5 came the scrapping of Article 370 and the imposition of a communications blockade on the people of Jammu and Kashmir that ran for six long months and has still not been fully lifted.

With the result that the war against Terror turned a significant corner. But this is good for Muslims who suffer disproportionately when suicide bombers run amok.

Next, the Modi government pushed for, and secured, a favourable (if manifestly absurd) verdict from the Supreme Court on the Ayodhya issue that will see the fulfilment of the BJP’s long-standing agenda of building a Ram temple at the site where its leaders and supporters destroyed the Babri Masjid in 1992.

It turns out, Indian law gives judicial personality to a Hindu deity but not to Allah or Jehovah. The Hindu deity won his suit which was instituted before the BJP existed. 

In an inversion of legal common sense, a property dispute which led to the commission of a heinous crime was fast-tracked at the urging of Modi even as the criminal case continues to languish.

Varadarajan is not a lawyer. He is a journalist. In an inversion of journalistic common sense, he credits the BJP- which he abhors- with a popular decision made by the Bench. What he should be doing is saying 'Modi hasn't delivered for Hindus.' 

Last December saw the Modi government’s third ‘accomplishment’, the passage of the CAA. Just as the stated purpose behind the Triple Talaq law would have been served by making it a crime for any husband, and not just Muslims, to abandon their wives without a proper divorce settlement, the stated purpose behind the CAA could have been met by allowing any bona fide victim of persecution from the neighbourhood to become an Indian citizen rather than just the non-Muslim ones.

What happened when Taslima Nasrin was granted refuge in India? Some Indian Muslims put a price on her head. She had to run away to Sweden. The fact is a Muslim who is persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan or Bangladesh would not be safe from Indian Muslims if they took refuge in India. By contrast, though Indian Muslims object to non Muslims gaining refuge in India, they can't kill them without getting killed in an asymmetric manner themselves.

But the Modi government’s intention was to use religion as a factor to polarise society.

Varadarajan and his ilk's intention was to keep the BJP out of power. But because of their stupidity, they drove even English speaking upper caste people into the arms of the BJP. Nobody minded if Soniaji was being advised Ahmed Patel. But if she was listening to kooks like Romilla Thapar or Harsh Mander then she had to go. There was truly no alternative to NaMo. 

Home minister Amit Shah’s infamous ‘chronology’ made it clear the government intended to proceed next to creating an all-India National Register of Citizens, a plan he and Modi were forced to backtrack on, at least temporarily, when they realised the depth of public opposition to it.

Amit Shah very cleverly defused the situation in Assam- itself the product of Judicial activism- by raising this bogey. But now Shah is touting 'One Nation, one Ration Card' to deal with the problem of migrants. The pandemic has concentrated minds on this issue. Obviously, this ties into a National Register of Citizens such that entitlements are portable. The opposition to the NRC was orchestrated and based on lies. It has now run out of steam. Poor people face existential problems relating to access to the public distribution system. They will clamor for the thing because it is vital to their own economic security. 

The government’s next ‘accomplishment’ was to use communal violence in Delhi to break the resolve of the anti-CAA protests.

Being beaten to death does tend to 'break resolve'. But if mobs do it- in retaliation- thoroughgoing ethnic cleansing follows. The minority gets it in the neck. The Left-Liberals abruptly disappear back into their Ivory towers. 

When that process failed – or was interrupted by the coronavirus – it spun a yarn about the violence being the product of an ‘Islamist-Marxist conspiracy’ and arrested several activists at the forefront of the protest against the CAA under the draconian UAPA.

With hindsight, this should have been done sooner. But six months ago who would have predicted that the Left-Liberals would so bungle the anti-CAA protest? There was plenty of money available and the whole country was seething with different types of economic woe. Modi hoped the thing would become a Muslim dominated affair but this was by no means inevitable. I still don't understand why the Left wasn't able to put up a bigger showing. So far as I can make out, they gave the excuse that the thing was being hijacked by Islamic State type fanatics and so they felt they had to keep away. But, the Muslim activists too had their own complaints. It seems they were being asked 'not to look Muslim'. What were they supposed to do, discard beards and burqas and put on janeos and bindis? 

This despite the fact that the whole world knows the violence was overwhelmingly targeted at Muslims, and that Muslims were as likely to conspire to destroy their homes and livelihoods as the Jews in Nazi Germany were to engineer Kristallnacht.

A Polish Jew shot a German diplomat in Paris because he was angry at the deportation of Polish Jews. Kristallnacht was a reaction to this. It turned out to be popular not just in Germany but also in France and Poland. Anti-Semitism helped Hitler conquer Europe and recruit local collaborators.

The timeline of the Delhi riots are clear. Some Muslims started it and then the entire community got stomped. Why did they start it? Perhaps there was some money on the table for instigating a riot while Trump was in India. The other explanation is that the Police Commissioner was a poltroon.

While the Modi lobby is likely to see the suppression of democracy and the growing insecurity of Muslims as major achievements in their leader’s sixth year as PM, there is no getting away from Modi’s three big failures: his government’s Kashmir policy, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his inability to insulate the poor and vulnerable from the predictable consequences of the lockdown.

Varadarajan speaks too soon. Kashmir seems a success. So does his handling of Covid. 'Insulating the poor and vulnerable' has to do with 'One Nation, One Ration Card' which nicely dovetails with NRC, Aadhar and Modi's various populist schemes.

As for the Muslims, they have to find some separate political representation. Owaisi seems to be doing well out of his projection of a 'Nationalist Muslim' persona. At the regional level, Muslims will retain a place in governing coalitions. But what about the Center? Tokenist representation can be provided by any party. Muslims want more and they will get it sooner or later. But how it will happen remains unclear. 

The government’s unwillingness, on ‘security’ grounds, to restore 4G services in the valley or release all political leaders and permit democratic political activity is the biggest indication that the scrapping of Article 370 is not the silver bullet Modi and Shah claimed it would be.

No. It shows the policy succeeded. 

The longer the current approach continues, the greater will be popular fears in the valley of a ‘demographic’ solution to the Kashmir problem.

But the thing is inevitable. 

Of course, the Supreme Court’s refusal to do anything about the mass arrests or the internet ban, let alone prioritise the question of the legality of the Article 370 and CAA moves, can be chalked down as another great government achievement, one that Ranjan Gogoi, MP, can savour as he contemplates life from the treasury benches.

Wonderful! Varadarajan says Modi's superpowers include changing the past. Gogoi is from a Congress family. As a Judge, he helped the Bench take charge of the Assam migrants issue which politicians had failed to solve. Once the Court mandated Nationality Registry was completed, Modi and Shah had to engage in some pretty nifty footwork. Thanks to the idiocy of the Opposition, they snatched victory from the jaw of defeat.

Sadly for India and, for Narendra Modi, the ad hoc, knee-jerk, centralised, undemocratic style of functioning that is the hallmark of the prime minister’s method of functioning has led him to commit monumental blunders on the coronavirus front that not even the judiciary can save him from.

Varadarajan thinks a style of functioning can be the hallmark of a method of functioning. Either that or he no longer thinks before writing his worthless articles. 

Indeed, after first giving the government a pass on its treatment of migrant workers, the Supreme Court was forced by the unending misery on display across India to reconsider its approach.

But the Bench now knows that its activism was silly. If it continues to attract attention then everybody and her cat will come forward with accusations of rape and murder against every Judge. Indeed, just recently some Supreme Court Judges gave color to the theory that Justice Loya had been killed by his fellow Judges because the fellow refused a bribe. I am not saying that Loya was anally gang raped before he was murdered. Yet, when it comes to Judges, it is generally a case of 'in for a penny, in for a pound.' If a bunch of them decide to kill one of their number, why not sodomize him as well?

The fact is that from the word go, Modi’s handling of the crisis has been disastrous. As late as March 13, his government was blithely declaring there was no public health emergency. Yet 11 days later, the prime minister felt compelled to impose a national lockdown with four hours notice to the public. While Modi cannot be faulted for believing a lockdown was the answer to the spread of the disease – most of the world’s leaders have acted similarly – he is perhaps the only major leader to have made zero preparations.

The fact is, Varadarajan's reporting can't be trusted even in the slightest detail. Modi's handling of the crisis is quite good. India has done quite well. Its low mortality rate is a matter of comment.
In any case, a Prime Minister is not supposed to make preparations for pandemics. Health is a State, not a concurrent, subject. Perhaps one or two bureaucratic heads should roll. But hindsight is 20-20. 

Even if he had firmed up the lockdown plan on March 19, the day he announced the ‘Janata Curfew’ for March 22, that would have given him six days to plan for the consequences.

But, the responsibility to 'plan for the consequences' falls upon the States as per the Indian Constitution. Some, like Kerala did very well indeed. None did very very badly. 

Having squandered the days before the lockdown and immediately after in the pursuit of political objectives such as the toppling of the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh and the communalisation of the pandemic, the Modi government hoped the heavy-handed use of state machinery would allow it to get away with its minimum governance.

No time was wasted. It is not the case that the politicians or administrators who were tasked with the Public Health, Policing and other relevant functions were  involved in behind the scenes politicking. Varadarajan speaks of 'communalization of the pandemic'. This refers to the spread of the virus by Tablighis who had attended a Conference in Malaysia. Varadarajan's suggestio falsi is that Muslims are spreading the virus. This is not the case. One Muslim organization, unfortunately, was holding a Conference in the wrong time and at the wrong place. But that organization has been condemned by other Muslim organizations. Varadarajan's genius is to appear 'secular' and anti-Modi, yet write in such a way that the Muslim community alone gets defamed and his own high caste brethren feel that only the BJP can save their hides. 

The reality is that the lockdown has failed to contain the epidemic even as it has laid waste to the economy and to the livelihoods of millions.

So, the reality is that the virus has hurt India just as it has hurt almost every other big country in the world. 

Along the way, the sangh parivar’s ugly Islamophobia has also undermined years of Indian diplomacy in the Gulf region – a development that will have harmful economic consequences for the country.

No it won't.  The pandemic has revealed the Gulf's extreme vulnerability.  Its prosperity is based on an unsustainable model. The remittance economy will die off. This means funding for Islamic extremism will dry up. The era of globalization is over. Dirigiste Nationalism is back on the agenda. Big countries like India can still grow- more especially as crude oil prices crash. By contrast, both the Gulf and Iran will have to pipe small.

During Modi 1.0, Arun Shourie joked that the BJP government was ‘Manmohan Singh plus cow’.

Shourie was a cretin, sure enough.

Today, given the manner in which Modi has used the pandemic to centralise governance, promote the interests of big business, trample on the democratic rights of the people

anally rape Siddhartha Varadarajan every night,

and manage the judiciary, his rule is increasingly beginning to resemble the emergency of Indira Gandhi. Apologists for Indira Gandhi used to say, ‘at least the trains run on time’. Modi 2.0 is not even able to manage that, such is the shambles six years of ideologically driven ‘governance’ have created.

Not to mention the condition of Varadarajan's rectum. 

If there is one thing we’ve learned about Modi in all the years he has been chief minister and prime minister, it is that he never learns from his mistakes.

Varadarajan has been writing about Modi for 20 years. The one lesson he never learns is that Modi is a smart guy who figures out ways to do his job better than even his supporters had hoped. 

The current situation is the product of his cult of personality, and the only response he is capable of is to double down on his worst impulses.

Modi is good at P.R. But he doesn't have a 'cult of personality' for the excellent reason that this would attract the ire of his rivals within his party. They would feel that they were not being given proper credit for their own achievements. This was the problem with Indira and Rajiv- but also what made Manmohan so ineffectual in his second spell in office.

The fact is Modi was prepared to leave Gujarat precisely because he had no personality cult or nepotistic or caste based network to protect there. He took a risk by going to Delhi. But he was a better PM than anyone had predicted. 

Centralisation of authority, authoritarianism and divisive, polarising politics have helped him transcend crises before.

The reverse is the case. Delegation of authority and institutional checks and balances have enabled him to improve governance more especially in the context of last mile delivery. The polarising politics of the Left-Liberals has helped Modi. He doesn't have to create a Muslim bogeyman because people like Varadarajan do it for him by claiming that Indian Muslims don't want non Muslim refugees to gain asylum in India. They are prepared to kill cops and burn down their neighbor's houses and demand 'azadi' to do so on a bigger scale. This scares the shit out of the non-Muslim. They then flock to the BJP. 

As COVID-19 spreads and the economy flounders, the coming year will prove far more damaging for Indian democracy than anything we have seen thus far.

Varadarajan thinks democracy is damaged if Modi gets more and more popular. So what he is saying is- 'BJP will trounce Mamta in West Bengal. They will win big in 2021'.  Such a sentiment is highly demoralizing to the Opposition. Why on earth is Varadarajan's rag being financed? It helps only the BJP who, however, are too canny to waste money on the English press. Perhaps, there is some big Corporate conspiracy to destroy the Left-Liberal Indian establishment from within. But the thing is otiose. Those fuckers are as stupid as shit. They can be relied on to help only their enemies.