April 1, the official day of pulling cons, is here, and the “officially smart” are busy planning new cons on unsuspecting, or in some cases anticipating, fools. The more elaborate the con, the more appreciation it garners from the fools, or in general terms, the masses. What makes this game really intriguing is the length of time a con can carry on for—hours, minutes, days, months or years—and the number of times the same con can be played. The golden rule is, no offence should be taken. None whatsoever. It is with this rule in mind that political leaders, across continents, play this fool’s game over and over again. And this year, the con is ever so elaborate, at every level, and involves much higher stakes, especially in the case of the US and India.
Take Trump for starters. His ‘Make America Great Again’ initiative was the perfect pitch to build a narrative for ‘Trump Again’ in the presidential elections last November. People voted him to power believing in his promises of cutting down prices, mass deporting of illegal immigrants, blanket tariffs on neighbouring countries to strengthen the US economy and ending the Russia-Ukraine war. For middle class Americans, struggling against inflation and unemployment, Trump policies held the promise of the utopian American dream, which states that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life.
Today, most Americans have realised that they have been “had”, as inflation remains on the higher side, and Trump’s economic initiatives, including an aggressive trade policy, are “frightening consumers as well as they do corporates”, as CNN has quoted Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, as saying. Even mass deportations have come at a cost, as a new study by researchers at the University of Utah states that enforcing mass immigration will “generate a reduction in the number of individuals who are supplying labour to the construction industry, significantly slowing an already sluggish rate of new residential construction.” This will exacerbate the housing crisis.
The story, in India, is no different. In 2024, the BJP won the Lok Sabha elections a third consecutive time on a manifesto based on Modi ki guarantee (aptly named so), arguing that the Prime Minister was a man of his words and fulfilled all his promises. Since 2014, Prime Minister Modi has fulfilled the two main promises that he and his party fought the elections on: construction of the Ram mandir at Ayodhya and revoking of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.
In the last 11 years the BJP government at the centre has floated many schemes aimed at making “India great again”, such as Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, Digital India, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, etc. Time and again the people were updated as to how India had “arrived” on the global platform. The stature of our PM, we were told, was higher than most leaders of the West. The PM himself, without reservations, took credit of stopping the war between Russia and Ukraine to bail out students caught in the crossfire. A strong and determined PM at the centre, the economy booming, the country becoming atmanirbhar, and the temple ready for the inaugural prayer. The janata had it all, and so it voted Modi to power for the third time.
The con lasted another year. But now the haze is clearing. Indians, gullible as they are, are faced with a reality altogether different — in a fast developing economy, around 81.35 crore people are dependent on free rations; unemployment and inflation are at an all-time high; crimes against women and minorities have significantly increased; the atmanirbharta took a significant setback as India’s “imports from China witnessed an increase by 118.77% to reach $118.77 billion, meanwhile, exports to China decreased by 37.59% year on year to reach USD 17.49 billion, down from last year’s net exports of USD 28.03 billion”, according to a paper on India-China bilateral trade by the Embassy of India in Beijing.
Even Modi’s popularity on the global level seems questionable, given the way illegal migrants were deported by the Big Brother, handcuffed and chained, in a military plane. Also, despite the innumerable foreign trips made at the cost of the exchequers, FIIs are bidding goodbye to the Indian market.
And that’s not all, an unprecedented increase in communal violence has made social divisions deeper, with hate crimes, instigated by hate speeches, increasing manifold. With all this going on, corruption now seems the least of people’s problems. With all this going on, corruption now seems the least of people’s problems. Going by the World Happiness Report 2025, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, Indians, ranked 118th out of 147 countries, are not really a very happy lot today.
Yet, the biggest con played by the government to date has been to tell people they are living in a democracy, with their rights intact. They can eat, wear, pray, live and talk freely. They can criticise, crack jokes and use satire at the expense of the establishment, and the holier-than-thou political leaders. But then reality bites when a stand-up comic receives death threats or a journalist is slapped with a court case or activists are thrown in jail under false charges.
Mark Twain was right to say that “the first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year”; and we are a people full of dreams living in a fool’s paradise, for sure.
