It’s a battle between Modi and 11 PM claimants: Hardeep Puri

Jan 26,2019

Modi needs 10 more years to completely turn things around. By 2029, India would be a $10 trillion economy.’

NEW DELHI: Delusion and power often go hand in hand. How else can one explain Hitler’s decision to open the second front for his army in World War II by invading Russia? At the height of his power, especially when there was no stopping his men on the western front, the Fuhrer turned his attention eastward and took his forces to the frigid Russian war fronts where, a century ago, Czar’s General November and General December had almost decimated Napoleon’s army. Hitler’s forces met the same disastrous fate.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, through his latest book Delusional Politics (Penguin, Rs 599), makes us believe that the delusional streak still remains alive and kicking among the powers-that-be. “Hitler was initially injected with vitamins for health reasons, but towards the end of his life, he got completely dependent on opiate. He may have been on a high when he took some of the irrational decisions like the Russia invasion,” says the diplomat-turned-politician. In the contemporary world, if not delusion, what else can explain then British Prime Minister David Cameron’s knee-jerk decision to go for a referendum on Brexit, sitting at a pizza parlour in the United States?

Explaining how the decision to hold the Brexit referendum was taken in haste, Puri reminds that Cameron, “sitting in a pizza parlour at Chicago airport” in 2012, came up with the idea to “smoke out” his own party colleagues. The decision, which today threatens to jeopardise Britain’s global standing and make it descend into what is now explicitly and derisively called FUKEW, or the Former United Kingdom of England and Wales, was aimed at settling political scores. Equally delusional was the decision of his successor, Theresa May, to call for a snap poll in order to strengthen the position of the Conservative Party as the terms and conditions of the Brexit negotiations were on. “May holds an election when there was no need for it. The ruling party had a comfortable majority,” he says.

Delusion isn’t just confined to Britain, though. According to Puri, US President Donald Trump’s decision to shut down the government to get fund for the Mexican wall and Manmohan Singh’s audacity to gamble the future of his own government to get the India-US nuclear deal through mark the same delusional politics. “Dr Singh, unlike his natural persona, went way out of the way for the nuclear deal. I don’t think a single dollar of commercial contracting has been done under it.”

In a free-wheeling interaction with The Sunday Guardian, the diplomat-turned-politician talks about not just the delusionary grandeur of the political class, but also how India’s politics is witnessing a paradigm shift under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Despite the setback in the recent Assembly elections, he is upbeat about the BJP’s prospects in 2019 and says people will opt for chemistry rather than arithmetic, especially when the battle is “between Modi and 11 prime ministerial claimants”.