Netas’ Dictionaries

The dictionary of Mamata Banerjee defined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as those who spread “hate in the name of nationalism” to divert the people from the spread of “financial Coronavirus”. Devendra Fadnavis defined this stance of Ms Banerjee as “pseudo-nationalism”. To add solidarity to this accusation, Yogi Adityanath questioned the disparity between the West Bengal government’s interest in the Durga idol immersion processions and the Muharram processions, and defined the favouring of the Islamic community by Ms Banerjee as “pseudo-secular”. In response, Ms. Banerjee said that West Bengal supported secularism since the Muslim community makes up 32% of the population.” “Will you suppress the majority community to show that you are secular?” questioned Yogi Adityanath, leaving the definition of secularism ambiguous at best.

Defining himself as a “man of the people” and “man for the minorities”, Asaduddin Owaisi came out in support of Mamata Banerjee and proclaimed that the BJP is diverting the public from real issues with issues such as “Triple Talaq, Kashmir and Ram Mandir”, all three of which he defined as “unimportant”. This raised a series of arguments over the priorities of the BJP when Manohar Lal Khattar came out in defence of the BJP, questioning whether Mr Owaisi really found the aforementioned issues unimportant. Clearing the air on what is “unimportant” and what is not, Mr Owaisi proclaimed that “those issues because of which people are not dying” are defined as unimportant. In defence of the stance that those were, in fact, less pressing issues, Dr Manmohan Singh claimed that “rather than looking into Ram Mandir, we should be looking into the economy which has been depreciating.”

On the other hand, in defining the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as “short-sighted”, Amit Shah claimed that the Congress party used MGNREGA to keep unemployment levels in check so that it would not hamper their vote bank politics. “Loan waivers” as a phrase was also coined by him as the only known mantra of the Indian National Congress (INC). Mirroring similar stances with his Home Minister, Narendra Modi claimed that all the INC did was falsify data pertaining to MGNREGA. On the contrary, Farooq Abdullah commended MGNREGA as a policy that contributed a lot to rural employment. He also questioned the intentions of the government in slashing the budget for the program. In response to this contention, Mr Modi claimed that more stable employment was needed for the poor, rather than the hundred-day employment that was provided under MGNREGA. The definition of “tukde tukde gang” put forth by Amit Shah as the ones responsible for the violence witnessed in the colleges of New Delhi was countered by Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s definition of the BJP as the “real tukde tukde gang”.

In a response to all claims that cited Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as proof that the economy is in bad shape, Narendra Modi questioned whether the GDP is the correct measure for a country’s economic development. This question was unanswered or uncontested by any other member in the committee, leaving a “correct” index of economic development undefined in any of the Netas’ dictionaries.

(Edited by Harsha Sista)