The Congress on Tuesday said the Narendra Modi government had conspired to keep people constantly busy in emotive and irrelevant issues to divert the nation’s attention from its failures and misdeeds.

Party spokesperson Pawan Khera said at a media conference: “The government always manufactures controversies, whips up emotions to keep people busy. Anger, hate and fear are powerful emotions. People get engrossed, forgetting their real concerns. That has been the ideological journey of the RSS-BJP — to play on emotions, whip up emotions that divide, create villains. Use distorted history and mythology for the purpose. That is the modus operandi.”

Alleging that the mainstream media was also participating in State-sponsored distractions, Khera said: “They keep us blinded, they don’t want the people to see the examples of misgovernance on every front — be it economy, unemployment, farmers’ movement, women’s safety, etc. They are not worried about anything. They keep focus on two things — how to remain in power and how to help crony capitalists. As our leader Rahul Gandhi has said — working for hum do, hamare do.”

Rahul had told Parliament last week that the government had refashioned the family planning slogan “hum do, hamare do”. While Rahul did not name anybody, a BJP minister named “Adani and Ambani”.

The Congress has often accused the Modi government of headline and perception management. While Rahul and former defence minister A.K. Antony have made serious allegations against Prime Minister Modi, describing the terms of disengagement in Ladakh as surrender to China, the national discourse all of a sudden has turned to the arrest of environment activist Disha Ravi on the charge of editing and sharing a farmers’ protest toolkit.

Nobody is asking the Prime Minister to explain the allegations about a compromise on the territorial integrity of India.

Emotions do play a vital role in the BJP’s politics. The entire political discourse in the last parliamentary election had been hijacked at the last moment by a surgical strike inside Pakistan in response to the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF jawans were killed. Modi, who became Prime Minister in 2014 promising “achchhe din” — packaged around economic reforms, fight against corruption, two crore jobs every year, doubling of farmers’ income and countless other lofty promises — successfully concealed his failures behind the powerful emotion of nationalism by spinning a Pakistan-centric discourse in 2019.

Prior to the Pulwama tragedy and the surgical strike, the political dialogue had been dominated by rising unemployment, agrarian distress, the disastrous demonetisation, the Rafale fighter jet scam, atrocities on women and the failure to bring back black money. The Prime Minister’s apathy to answer questions and debate his performance had further pushed him to a corner, but the emotions whipped up by the Pulwama tragedy and its aftermath dramatically transformed the political backdrop, pushing the Opposition’s narrative out of the electoral frame.

The Congress, however, hopes that one emotion — triggered by the same government — will ultimately unite the people. Khera said: “The emotion of suffering — caused by historic unemployment, economic recession, farmers’ distress and rising prices of petroleum products — will unite people cutting across castes, religions, language and region. For six years and nine months, people have witnessed the frightening face of the Modi government in every sphere of life. This emotion will unite them and we are already witnessing this change.

“No matter where we come from — which caste, which religion — when we pay Rs 90 for a litre of petrol, it pinches. And we all know this is despite the fact that the price of crude oil in the international market is very low. In May 2014 when the Congress relinquished office, crude oil in the international market was $109 per barrel and petrol was sold at Rs 71 a litre and diesel at Rs 57.28. Now when crude oil is $54.41 per barrel, petrol in Delhi costs Rs 89.29 a litre and diesel Rs 79.70. This is because of Modi tax. The cost of petrol today is Rs 31.82 and diesel Rs 33.46. The Modi government earned Rs 20 lakh crore by levying taxes.”

Rahul also took a dig at the government over petrol prices, tweeting: “The Modi government is determined to loot the common people and serve the interest of hamare do.”