India is a country of paupers. The middle class is emerging due to many global factors, but still, India remains the poor and unequal nation. Unlike China, which fought the problem of inequality and brought out 600 million people out of poverty in last three decades, India does not have any policy in place to destroy poverty in India.

The poverty is directly correlated with the caste system. The lower one moves on the caste hierarchy the poorer one becomes locking the lower castes in the perpetual circle of poverty and discrimination.

The RSS/BJP Government can never dare to challenge the caste system directly as it cuts into their fundamental interests of “Brahmins and Banias” who run the “deep” state in India. This implies that the RSS/BJP can never attack the poverty in India.

The messier are the issues in the country, the ultimate beneficiaries of this mess and confusion are India’s Brahmins and Banias. But in the democracy, the votes must be won and if the party fails to get votes of the poor, it is doomed to extinction.

Remember the history of India and Indira Gandhi’s “Garibi Hatao” program and the way it galvanised the masses to make her invincible.

The RSS/BJP does nothing new. They take a leaf out of the history book and repeat it. Philosophically, this is how Brahminical Hindu philosophy is conceived where the time runs in a cycle, instead of the arrow of time running higher and into much-evolved planes.

Modi is repeating the same rhetoric of “pro-poor”: He claims that the highest posts in India are occupied by the people from the humble background.

In a strange logic, why he is also not supporting the OBCs, SCs, and STs to occupy the posts which are legitimately due to them because of their sheer numbers.

Why does he not support proportionate reservation for all the poor and backward classes in India? Therefore, his claim is a propagandist and holds no serious ground for the poor and backward in India.

If he is for the backwards and the poor, why is he letting Jaitley, a brahmin, to hold two important portfolios of Finance and Defense and why is his ministry so filled up with important posts given to the Brahmins and other upper castes.

The Congress is shooting on its own feet when Gulam Nabi is claiming that even the rich and advantaged (he cites Nehru, Gandhi, and other gods in the Congress pantheon) have sacrificed for India in response to Modi’s claim on the poor.

This is absurd. Instead, they should be talking about how to bring the Indians out of clutches of poverty and caste system.

This is what happens in politics, the discourses are set mutually to misguide and fool the masses. India’s poor and backwards have become nothing but a rhetoric device in the hands of dominant political parties.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist