Can the lion be bearded in its home?

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi...slammed opposition parties for 'adopting a culture of distributing revadi (freebies) to gather votes' and asked people to be wary of it, saying it is detrimental to the country's development as it will keep the nation deprived of facilities that require hard work to be put in." "The rebuttal was swift, with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal redefining what the PM defined. 'When you provide undue benefits to some corporates, forgive thousands of crores in loans of your friends, or use a foreign trip as an excuse to settle contracts for them with foreign governments, then it is 'revadi'. It is not so when we provide free quality schooling to 18 lakh (1.8 million) poor and middle-class children, get 99 percent results and have four lakh children leaving private schools for government ones.'" "The immediate provocation for the 'lob' by Prime Minister Modi and the prompt 'volley' from Kejriwal is the looming elections in Gujarat later this year." Elections to Gujarat assembly must be held by December 2022. wikipedia. "Again in 2017, a fortnight before the elections were declared, and the code of conduct came into force, the BJP government in the state went on a spree announcing projects and sops worth Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion), with at least 4 major schemes and numerous other benefits being announced within the last 24 hours." DH. Gujarat is Modi's home state. "Ironically, in March 2022, the BJP (Modi's party) had claimed it had won the UP Assembly polls due to the support of millions of 'labharthis' or beneficiaries of its welfare schemes." DH. K Kamaraj, then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, extended free mid-day meals to school students across Tamil Nadu, which is today "replicated across India and in many other countries", said former IAS officer Sasikanth Senthil. "One can criticise the free color television scheme, but it had a positive externality in the form of 100% electrification of individual houses in Tamil Nadu by 2008, while the rest of India took more than 10 years to catch up." There are other ways of getting votes, such as religion. "What a ridiculous people we have become. Here is a sample of the absurdities around us - a TV channel claims a dam that caused floods was breached in Assam by Muslim terrorists as part of a 'Flood Jihad'," wrote Sidharth Bhatia. "The government arrested four men, all Muslims in connection with the alleged breach." Anti-Muslim songs trend on YouTube. "The lyrics are abusive or threatening. They are usually based on the premise that Hindus have suffered for centuries at the hands of Muslims - and now it's payback time." BBC. "Three years after the Centre abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370...in 2019, violence in the erstwhile state has seen a drastic decline, official figures reveal." DH. "The facade of normalcy (in J&K) comes at a grave cost. Even if it means forcibly caging Kashmiri Pandits in camps. The BJP's concern for the Kashmiri Pandits is purely performative while exploiting the pain of the Kashmiri Pandits to further the narrative that 'Hindus are in danger'," wrote former chief minister of J&K Mehbooba Mufti. Can the BJP lose Gujarat? Easier to beard a lion in its den. Gujarat is the home of the Asiatic lions.