Back in 2014, I made a simplistic forecast in an article carried by Deccan Herald. Simplistic, because it was only too obvious and logically inevitable. I said then that Modi’s honey moon with development will last no more than two years and that a switch from development to communal polarisation as the electoral mantra would follow thereafter.

A budget, the common man knows, is not an exercise in number crunching. It is a statement of intent, a phosphorescent revelation of the hand of strategy. To second-guess that strategy, all one has to do is to heed its manifest, nearly arrogant, side-lining of the great Indian middle class, which has returned from the budget session empty handed. The youth of India, likewise, the repository of our much-touted demographic dividend, too are left in the lurch.

It comes as no surprise to anyone acquainted with hindutva ideology that it is genetically step-motherly towards modern, progressive, liberal education capable of spreading rational thinking and scientific temper. Education activates aspirations and unsettles the status quo of entrenched inequities and privileges. Unmet nascent aspirations are potential headaches. Mere rhetoric will not keep these genies bottled up. In fact, the main reason why Christian missionary work in education has been reviled, beginning with the atrocities in Dangs of Gujarat, is its penchant for empowering the socially and economically disenfranchised. Cess for education and health has been increased from 3% to 4% in the present budget. The fact stares us in the face, though, that tax collection for education has no correlation to investment in education. It is doubtful if even 10% of the cess collected in the past from tax payers has been invested meaningfully in education. The government is visibly retreating from education, despite salaciously packaged data and robust propaganda in this regard for public consumption.

The allocation for SCs/STs, likewise, belies the professed charitable disposition of this government for this segment. The finance minister laid special emphasis in his speech on the increased amounts allocated for these heads, but cleverly concealed the fact that in percentage terms what is offered is the story like other day. So, here are a few indicators.

The allocation for SCs in the present budget is 50548 crores out of a total of 24.4 lakh crores, which is 2.32%, whereas the SCs comprise 16.6% of our population. The allocation for SCs in 2014-15 was 50548 crores, which was 2.82% of that budget. So, there is a real decrease of 0.5% in SC allocation, whereas there’s an apparent increase in terms of numbers, which is being trumpeted as commitment to the poor. The case of STs is similar. The allocation to this sector in the present budget is 39135 crores, which is 1.6% of the total outlay. The STs are 8.6% of the population. They were allotted 32386 crores in 2014-15, which was 1.8% of the then budget. So, there is an effective cut of 0.2%. The real problem, in this segment, is still different. A lion’s share of even these meagre and mockingly disproportionate allocations will remain un-utilised, as in previous years. It is like someone offering you three meals a day on paper, but serving you only a meal and a half.

The real gainers, as was only to be expected, are the corporates. So, the rich will get richer. And the intimate oneness between them and the merchants of good governance will intensify.

Nobody needs to be told that the essence of fascism is the corporatisation of the state. Take just one example. Industries with an annual turn over of 250 crores or less will be levied only 25% corporate tax; whereas I, a pensioner, will be levied 30% tax on what I earn by writing an article. My income from interests on bank deposits has shrunk alarmingly, since 2014. The blood from my anaemic body is being transfused into the corpulent bodies of corporates. I have served the country lifelong and I feel cheated. I am part of the jilted middle class.

Come now to the point. What the BJP is saying through the budget is roughly as follows. “Look here, we do not have to be hamstrung, any longer, with appeasement politics. In the new India on our anvil, neither minorities, nor SCs, nor STs, not even the middle class will matter. We have found a way out even of the ‘coalition dharma’ that wrecked UPA.”

What, then, is the sizzling new card?

Remember UP elections? That election was not won on good governance. It was won despite bad governance. Demonetisation, which claimed over a hundred lives and caused a massive and prolonged dislocation of national life, was less governance and more maximum, brutal government. Any party that played this cruel sport on a people would have perished at the hustings. But BJP triumphed flatteringly. Communal polarisation of UP voters was the magic wand. In UP, BJP tasted blood.

In truth, the present budget smells strongly of UP elections. That given, we must expect, from now onwards orchestrated communal polarisation of the people. The Ayodhya issue will be inflamed. A sense of majoritarian grievance, the delusion of the majority community suffering, in diverse ways, on account of minorities, showcasing of skeletons of historical wrongs, can be expected to be unleashed.

The citizens of India, on their part, need to be clear that communal polarisation and good governance cannot co-exist. It is either…..or. In a time of general disarray and existential vacuity, the masses fall back on religion almost compulsively. For that reason, they become utterly vulnerable to religion-based manipulation, structured on religious pride or religious grievance. They would overlook even extreme privation and personal loss to stand by, as they would be told, their faith and culture, all of which are presumably in jeopardy.

But no one should count complacently on how the tragicomedy will end. Polarisation is a perilous game. India, given her diversities, is a delicate fabric. Once polarisation is legitimised, it will spin out of control and proliferate into implosive fragmentation. Various identities and interest-groups will wrench this fabric to shreds. Every man’s hand, as the apocalyptic vision goes, will be at the throat of everyone else. That’s why BJP should read the face of the Karni Sena Sphinx in Rajasthan. In case help is needed in that exercise, here it is.

There’s no escape, my masters,

From the long shot, if you don’t mind,

Of the promises made, thinking us dolts.

Give us governance, not anarchy;

For that’s what you promised.

Poor we are and under-privileged,

But not deaf nor blind,

To miss the wing-beat of terror,

In the forest of your fancy dress.