Pune: Yogendra Yadav, the founder of socio-political organization Swaraj Abhiyan, on Wednesday said ‘knee-jerk’ platforms to form and drive an opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be counterproductive because the rot in India’s democratic institutions ran much deeper.He was speaking at a lecture chaired by the political analyst Suhas Palshikar and organized by the Pune International Centre at Yashada. Talking about the government’s “onslaught” against a set of values such as democracy, diversity and development, Yadav said, “Those values are under an onslaught that has been unprecedented in post-independence India.”“When the Prime Minister says ‘what is wrong in being seen with industrialists’, he says much more. He is inserting a new kind of political vocabulary, a more Ayn Rand kind of thinking. This government has taken the back door to amend forest and land acquisition laws, which strip away whatever the poor had,” he said.Yadav insisted PM Modi deserves to be voted out of power. “Another five years under Modi and the BJP will lead us down a path of Putin’s Russia,” he said, making his displeasure clear about the recent buzz of the opposition uniting, something he called a “knee-jerk reaction”.“Besides aggregation of votes in some states, the opposition’s unity will not achieve too much. Look at the people we saw on stage in Bengaluru. When people like Mamata Banerjee say they will save democracy after strangling it during the panchayat polls or when Sharad Pawar promises a corruption-free India, can they be trusted to bring change? Politics is about selling dreams. When I look at that stage, I get nightmares,” Yadav said, to the laughing audience.He said the only way to recreate a new political strategy is grassroots activism by young people, women and the marginalized communities. “Much of what passes off as secular politics is fraud. Some parties have used secularism for political convenience, or have used it as a byword for instrumental minoritism,” he told the audience.

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