The art of the 'Jumla' | The Business Standard
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Monday
June 05, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
MONDAY, JUNE 05, 2023
The art of the 'Jumla'

Thoughts

Nikhil Kumar, Foreign Policy
22 March, 2021, 11:30 am
Last modified: 22 March, 2021, 12:28 pm

Related News

  • India rescue work ends as focus turns to cause of worst train crash in decades
  • India rail crash probe focuses on electronic track management system
  • Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi calls on US audience to stand up for 'modern India'
  • Odisha train accident: Indian rail minister says accident caused by a change in electronic interlocking
  • Families, rescuers search for victims of India's worst train crash in decades

The art of the 'Jumla'

Demonetization looked like a classic jumla, a bold promise that proved economically ruinous for many Indians

Nikhil Kumar, Foreign Policy
22 March, 2021, 11:30 am
Last modified: 22 March, 2021, 12:28 pm
Nikhil Kumar, a writer and journalist based in New Delhi. Illustration: TBS
Nikhil Kumar, a writer and journalist based in New Delhi. Illustration: TBS

During his first campaign for national office in 2014, Narendra Modi made a memorable pledge. If elected as prime minister, he would launch a crusade to repatriate untaxed wealth stashed abroad by unscrupulous businesspeople. The recovered bounty, Modi promised, would be worth as much as $25,000 for every Indian, a colossal sum.

About a year after Modi won, with no sign of the windfall, a local broadcaster asked the Indian leader's election mastermind and closest political ally, Amit Shah, what had happened. "Look, this is a jumla," said Shah, now India's interior minister. The obscure word—found in Hindi, Urdu, and Gujarati, the official language of Gujarat state, Modi and Shah's home turf—literally means sentence or clause. But as Modi's star has grown brighter, a different connotation has gained prominence: a false promise or gross exaggeration.

"This was just a way of campaigning," Shah said, insisting that the public understood that no individual would ever receive such a massive cash injection. He might as well have added, "What, you didn't get it?"

As Modi begins his eighth year in power, Shah's poker-faced defense seems all the more telling. The jumla phenomenon offers a guide to understanding not just how India's reigning populist campaigns but also how he governs—and why he keeps winning despite a series of major policy failures. The truth or falsity of his claims hardly seems to matter. What wins the day, and continues to win Modi elections, is his apparent intent, transmitted to a young, desperate population via carefully crafted jumlas.

The best example came in late 2016, when Modi unveiled one of his most dramatic moves: demonetization, which scrapped high-denomination currency notes and rendered the vast majority of money in circulation illegal with immediate effect. India's economy runs mostly on cash transactions, and stunned Indians struggled to get their hands on the newly issued currency, creating chaos at banks. The government said it intended to target tax evaders and counterfeiters. The idea was that those holding untaxed wealth, known in India as black money, wouldn't want to be identified when they went in to exchange their stockpiles of old currency for new notes.

Modi said demonetization would "break the grip of corruption and black money" while ordinary citizens would only have to put up with "temporary hardships." That didn't turn out to be true. Official data shows that the policy didn't achieve its goal of exposing criminals, as almost all the old currency was returned. Local reports later revealed that India's central bankers had told Modi that the measure wouldn't work. Much of the fallout landed on India's poorest citizens. People lost their jobs as businesses went under or were forced to scale back their operations. For Modi's opponents, demonetization looked like a classic jumla: a bold promise that proved economically ruinous for many Indians.

Yet Modi's popularity only increased. Not long after he upended the cash economy, his Bharatiya Janata Party won by a landslide in elections in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous and most electorally significant state. Today, even as concerns grow about the systematic oppression of India's minorities and the smothering of dissent, Modi's success at the polls has continued, cementing his position as the godhead of Indian politics. When he ran for reelection in 2019, he defied predictions and increased his parliamentary majority.

Modi has also relied on jumlas under crisis. At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic last March, he plunged India into a sudden and all-encompassing nationwide lockdown. The decision pushed millions of daily-wage laborers into the streets and migrant workers onto packed buses, robbed of their already shaky livelihoods. It also helped spread the virus nationwide as the urban poor returned to the countryside. Modi said India would effectively shut down for 21 days, during which it would defeat the virus. As was clear to many experts at the time, these were more empty words.

Why do these lofty promises continue to work for Modi? The prime minister has used jumlas to portray himself as on the side of the so-called honest Indian left behind as the economy opened up and the country grew its own small army of billionaires. Demonetization may have failed to achieve its policy objectives, but it worked to show young, poor Indians that the prime minister intended to go after corrupt elites. Hundreds of millions of others have found themselves locked out of a system where basic resources, from health care to education, remain in short supply.

In Modi's telling, these inequities are the fault of those who governed before him. In an interview with a local newspaper during his reelection campaign, he talked about the "Khan Market gang"—a reference to one of Delhi's toniest markets, long a haunt of the richest and best connected. "Modi's image has not been created by the Khan Market gang, or Lutyens Delhi, but 45 years of his toil … good or bad," the prime minister said, referring to the upscale, British-built central Delhi enclave where the market is located.

Never mind that a policy fails, that what Modi says is clearly false—at least he's trying. The messaging is clear: Modi is a doer, working to fix a system that served his predecessors rather than the public. In his public appearances and on social media, where he is far and away the most influential politician in India, Modi presents himself as India's pradhan sevak, or prime servant in Hindi—a play on pradhan mantri, which means prime minister. The focus isn't on whether or not he delivers but on who he is, an idea that he hammers home with consummate skill. In early 2017, when someone jokingly tweeted that Modi "works for me," the Indian leader replied by saying, "Absolutely. Happy to be the Pradhan Sevak for each and every Indian."

A splintered and ineffective opposition at the national level has only helped Modi's cause, enabling him to hone his image even as his policies fail. Meanwhile, pressure on the media to toe the government line has allowed Modi and his proxies to continue making tall claims that go unchallenged.

India is still grappling with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. While its caseload hasn't spiraled to the levels feared by some experts, recent spikes in certain regions have raised concerns about a new wave. The unplanned nature of last year's lockdown exacted a heavy economic toll. But politically, it seems to have worked for Modi, who again came across as a doer, taking decisive action in the face of an unprecedented threat. The prime minister's approval ratings have dipped only marginally over the last year, confirming his skill at the art of the jumla.


Nikhil Kumar is a writer and journalist based in New Delhi.


Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Foreign Policy, and is published by special syndication arrangement

Top News / World+Biz / Politics

Jumla / India / Narendra Modi / Indian PM Narendra Modi / PM Narendra Modi / Prime Minister Narendra Modi / Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi / Home Minister Amit Shah / Amit Shah / BJP

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • An anatomy of power crisis
    An anatomy of power crisis
  • Photo: PID
    Fuel deals signed with Qatar and Oman, steps taken to buy coal: PM
  • FILE PHOTO: General view of Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
    Saudi pledges big oil cuts in July as OPEC+ extends deal into 2024

MOST VIEWED

  • Sudhir Baran Mazi. Illustration: TBS
    'End the discrimination against us': A physical education teacher's plea
  • Muhammad Zayed Hossen Jubayer. Illustration: TBS
    'You get what you deserve': The minds behind gender-based violence
  • Rashad Kabir. Illustration: TBS
    VAT on software: Will it impact the vision of Smart Bangladesh 2041?
  • Bangladesh needs to expand its apparel export to East Asia
    Bangladesh needs to expand its apparel export to East Asia
  • Sketch: TBS
    Is it time to add Islamic banking to our university curricula?
  • Snehasish Barua. Picture: Collected
    Will the expansion of proof of submission of returns requirement increase tax filing?

Related News

  • India rescue work ends as focus turns to cause of worst train crash in decades
  • India rail crash probe focuses on electronic track management system
  • Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi calls on US audience to stand up for 'modern India'
  • Odisha train accident: Indian rail minister says accident caused by a change in electronic interlocking
  • Families, rescuers search for victims of India's worst train crash in decades

Features

GarbageMan, launched in 2017, offers a modern, scientific and efficient approach towards waste management. Photo: Courtesy

Beating plastic pollution: Local startups build businesses around waste

19m | Panorama
New battleground of global powers

New battleground of global powers

15h | Panorama
Understanding the Indo-Pacific: A case of two rivalries

Understanding the Indo-Pacific: A case of two rivalries

15h | Panorama
US and its allies in the Ind-Pacific

US and its allies in the Ind-Pacific

15h | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

The fitness industry of Bangladesh tries to reshape from corona effect

The fitness industry of Bangladesh tries to reshape from corona effect

12h | TBS Stories
Ukraine ready to launch counteroffensive

Ukraine ready to launch counteroffensive

16h | TBS World
Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan's food on the streets of Dhaka

Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan's food on the streets of Dhaka

21h | TBS Food
This time Kawali was organized by open library

This time Kawali was organized by open library

1d | TBS Entertainment

Most Read

1
bKash denied permission to pay $4.10 lakh for Argentina football partnership
Banking

bKash denied permission to pay $4.10 lakh for Argentina football partnership

2
Boeing offers Biman its latest 787-10 Dreamliner
Bangladesh

Boeing offers Biman its latest 787-10 Dreamliner

3
Photo: Noor-A-Alam/TBS
Splash

The Night Dhaka did NOT vibe with Anuv Jain

4
Country's first floating solar power plant connected to national grid
Energy

Country's first floating solar power plant connected to national grid

5
File Photo: Mohammad Minhaj Uddin/TBS
Bangladesh

Low-cost housing planned for 4 lakh Bangabandhu Shilpa Nagar workers

6
Photo: TBS
Environment

Green space in Dhaka North declines 66% in 3 decades: Study

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]