Fable of the bicycle and a plane

July 11, 2024

ISLAMABAD – THE inability to accept defeat with grace comes from an authoritarian streak found in enfeebled democracies. Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, for example, are peas in a pod in this regard. Modi has an added problem — his compulsive obsessive rivalry with bête noir Jawaharlal Nehru’s back-to-back three-term tenure as India’s first prime minister. It reminds one of the soirée where a wet-behind-the-ears Urdu poet earned the wrath of a master versifier.

Legendary Firaq Gorakhpuri was waiting for his turn at the late-night mushaira when he felt compelled to chide a young poet for suspiciously plagiarising his lines to compose a bad verse. The young man pleaded innocence, adding a tad grossly that he was delighted to be involved in an intellectual accident with the master poet. Firaq’s response was withering: “One has heard of bicycles crashing into bullock carts. But a bicycle crashing into a plane?”

President Murmu, however, had to indulge Modi’s persistence. “The world can see Indians have for the third time formed a government with a stable and full mandate,” she said. “This has happened after six decades. People have shown trust in my government for the third time.” Murmu was clearly reading an address drafted by Modi’s office to the new parliament, earning endless applause from the treasury benches.

Full mandate? Stable government? In which case why did the markets, revered by BJP acolytes as a thermometer of the nation’s health, crash so nervously when the results came in on June 4? Worse, they crashed after Modi and his home minister exhorted investors in TV interviews to bet on their victory. The markets picked up only when help came from two regional parties who had little in common with