Modi’s quest for the magic figure of 272

ENARADA, New Delhi

By Ajay N Jha

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi already appears to have set out his agenda for 2014 LS polls by making an all out effort to tap the  first time voter and at the same time reach out to Muslims in a big way.

He knows that he is extremely popular among the younger voters of the country who are enamoured by him and he expects them to vote for him in a big way.

At the same time, he is planning to reach out to the Muslims because that is the only way the BJP can make a dent in the Congress vote share and for that it would need to dissociate itself from the Hindutva hotheads in the Sangh Parivar fold.

A section of strategists in team Modi have started understanding the fact that the BJP has been facing with stagnation in national vote share and struggling to find pan-Indian acceptability because of its association with political Hindutva. If the BJP manages to keep outfits such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal out of the picture, it could end up winning over an appreciable section of the Muslims to its side. It would also find support from the sections of the electorate who are not necessarily infatuated with the Congress, but are forced to side with it because of the perceived threat from the rabid hardliners to the socio-cultural fabric of the country.

The history of Lok Sabha polls post 1991 shows that the Muslim voters voted en masse against the BJP because of ‘fear factor’ as well as their own safety and security. Their first preference has been anyone who opposes the BJP. That is the reason why in many States they voted for Congress in a big way. However, that equation started changing rapidly with the emergence of regional parties with secular credentials. They shifted their votes in favour of, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Rashtriya Janata Dal or Janata Dal(U) in Bihar because they sensed that the Congress candidates were not in a position to win and they did  not want to waste their votes.

Yet the fact remains that “There are intra-community divisions within the Muslims akin to the caste system among Hindus and there is strong resentment among the Pasmandas — those lower in the hierarchy — against the well-off Ashrafis . But all of them band together when there is a threat perception to the community and this is the tendency that all so-called secular parties have been exploiting over the decades” says a columnist.

It is here that the team Modi is making efforts to remove ‘that threat perception’ in the hope that it would at least be in a position to win over a section of the Muslims, particularly the Pasmanda Muslims  because it is worth the risk. Modi had tried the same formula in Gujarat local bodies polls and he managed to get a substantial number of BJP Muslim candidates elected and now he is trying to drive home that point. Team Modi knows that it’s not as easy it sounds given the ideological background of the party and the strong anti-Muslim position of some outfits in the wider Sangh umbrella. Yet it is prepared to play the gamble and see its results in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

However, it remains to be seen if the Muslim community of this country would welcome his Olive branch approach because it is not yet sure or convinced that Modi has been identified all along with hardline Hindutva and not so great a record when it comes to treatment of Muslims, is prepared to initiate this process and take a calculated risk. Modi has more often been criticized and pilloried for his crude, loud, manipulative and hard-hitting jibes against his opponents aimed at wooing the galleries. He never shies away from taking pot shots at the Prime Minister and the Gandhis and sometimes, he goes to the extent of hitting below the belt as well.

Rabid Hindutwa and Ram Mandir which used to be the hallmark of BJP during the LK Advani era is slowly giving way to ‘inclusive  development’. Those Hindutwa hawks have been prevailed upon to maintain silence and not to become impediment in his ‘woo muslims’ strategy. He seems to understand grassroots electoral politics much better than most of his peers in the BJP. He realises it takes much more than quotable quotes, smart debating skills, goodwill of the middle class and support of the media to win elections. He realises that the party would head nowhere without a change in approach towards the Muslims and changing perceptions at the booth level. It need not be about garnering Muslim votes in large numbers per se but it is important from the point of view of changing the public perception of him and the party.’ Says a noted commentator.

Modi is fully aware that the ambitious target of 272 plus seats would not be possible without winning over a big chunk of anti-Congress, but not pro-BJP votes and that explains his gradual shift towards the Muslim community. ”Don’t be surprised if he wears the skull cap sometime later and reaches out openly to the Muslim community. For all his perceived weaknesses, Modi is a smart strategist. He knows what works with the electorate. For those following his career path, his subtle, calculated shift should not come as a surprise” says a BJP think tank member.

This strategy may totally be unacceptable and out of the blue for the Sangh parivar which has not yet come out of the hardcore Hindutwa politics. At the moment, however it seems to be allowing Modi a free hand in the hope that his Charishma would work.  And that was clearly visible even in Modi’s 15th August speech at Bhuj where he dug umpteen holes in Prime Minister’s ceremonial speech from the ramparts of red Fort and went to the extent of challenging the Prime Minister to a debate on development, the UPA government’s development record, the food security bill and corruption at the highest levels. He also lambasted the UPA government’s foreign policy, mentioning the ceasefire violations along the Line of Control and Pakistan’s recent aggression notwithstanding the unhappiness of LK Advani who said that” Independence day was not a time for criticism.”

Modi became the target of attack of almost all political parties for his umbrage at the Prime Minister from Shiv sena, CPI and even other regional parties because they felt, he was unnecessarily trying to belittle this mementous occasion.. In Modi’s perception perhaps, this was the best way to hog to national media limelight by puncturing holes in the Prime Minister’s speech which remained rather unspiring, insipid and lack-lustre. Modi knew that Dr Manmohan Singh was never known for his fine oratory skills and he chose this opportunity to score some brownie points over him even if it meant incurring the wrath of a section of his own party men. Yet he chose this opportunity to question the validity of promises made during the last 60-years and to know state of progress and time needed to achieve the lofty targets.

It was crude politics for sure. He had reduced the I-Day celebration to a roadside rabble rousing “nautanki.”  Perhaps Modi had assumed that he and his Gujarat Model will be the agenda for the next elections and everyone must follow the script written by him. It would be him – vs – the rest, he being the arbitrator, insisting the Prime Minister must debate with him in a presidential style campaign, forgetting the fact that the Prime Minister is answerable to the Parliament and not to some Chief Minister. He also forgot the fact there were 28 other chief ministers of equal rank and, he was just one of them. Yet he managed to hog all the media limelight for another 48 hours and that speaks volumes about his dexterous manipulation and management of media.

So far so good. But the target of 272 plus Lok Sabha seats would remain a pipe dream for Modi until he is successful in getting a huge chunk of votes from both UP and Bihar and a fair number of seats from the South which account of a total of 131 seats. As of now, the BJP think tank is hopeful about getting around 25 plus seats and in the whole of South, it would hardly be in a position to get even 25 out of the total of 131 seats.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lacks effective presence in several States, including large ones such as Andhra Pradesh (AP), Kerala, Tamil Nadu (TN) and West Bengal (WB) and others in the North-east (NE) barring Assam to an extent, and is unlikely to mount a credible challenge in the 168 Lok Sabha (LS) seats these account for.  Its 2014 tally from these States will remain in the lower single digits, as it was in 2004 and 2009. Odisha and Punjab, with 34 LS seats between them, are unlikely to add substantially to the party’s tally either. In Odisha, the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Indian National Congress (INC) are better entrenched.

In Punjab, seat sharing arrangements with the locally dominant partner, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)- Badal, will limit potential pickings for the party. Pickings are also likely to be limited from Jharkhand (14 LS seats) where besides the INC, a number of regional parties, each with strong local bases and candidates, would be in the fray. Till recently, even Karnataka (28 LS seats) would not have provided much hope but things may look up a trifle with Yeddyurappa reportedly negotiating a return or at least some kind of electoral understanding. Even then, the BJP tally of seats would come down substantially.

The key States for the BJP’s 2014 campaign are Bihar (40 LS seats), Chhattisgarh (11 LS seats), Gujarat (26 LS seats), Madhya Pradesh (MP) (29 LS seats), Maharashtra (48 seats), Rajasthan (25 LS seats) and Uttar Pradesh (UP) (80 LS seats). Of these, the BJP will feel confident about Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, MP and Rajasthan, all States where it will be in direct contest with theCongress party.

The Congress  has progressively weakened in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and MP (lackluster local leadership is a serious issue) and with the Vasundhara led BJP energetically galvanising discontent against the Gehlot led Rajasthan government, the BJP would look forward to repeating its impressive LS performances in Chhattisgarh (it won 10 of the 11 LS seats in both 2004 and 2009), matching its best ever showing over the last four LS elections in Gujarat (20 LS seats) and Rajasthan (21 LS seats) and repeating its performance of 2004 in Madhya Pradesh (25 LS seats).  This best case scenario would give the BJP 76 LS seats from these four States alone. In addition, the Modi brand of electioneering could prove tactically counter-productive for the BJP in these States as it would provide only sound ammunition and legitimate mobilisation opportunities for the  Congress party.

The three remaining States of Bihar, Maharashtra and UP- 168 LS seats between them- will be the trickier ones for the BJP.  Team Modi needs to win at least 50 seats from Uttar Pradesh to lay its claim on the throne of Delhi which seems quite unlikely at this moment. It is the strategy and performance in Bihar, Maharashtra and UP that will determine whether the BJP tastes power at the center in 2014 and whether Modi gets a realistic shot at the Prime Ministerial chair. In each of these States, the BJP will find itself in multi-cornered contests featuring parties with strong local presence and, with a view to maximizing returns, has gambled in Bihar and UP already with the break-up of the alliance with the JD (U) and a team and initial noises that signal return to its core issues in UP.

“At the end, Modi would have yet again foisted the party with a choice that it may not have exercised under another leadership’ says a veteran political commentator. Does that mean, Modi’s pipe dream of 2014 would go for a bust? Would the BJP under the leadership of Modi meet the same fate that the Congress party did in the last UP Assembly polls where it used to gather mammoth crowd for the rallies of Rahul Gandhi but could not translate them into votes?. Only coming days would unfold the actual story of such high voltage campaign and politicking.

(Posted on August 20, 2013 @ 1.30pm)

(Ajay N Jha is a veteran journalist from both Print and Electronic media.  He is the  President and CEO of WICS Global Communications.  His email id is Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com> )

The views expressed on the website are those of the Columnists/ Authors/Journalists / Correspondents and do not necessarily reflect the views of ENARADA.