ENARADA, New Delhi
By Ajay N Jha
A careful examination of the announcement of BJP team for Mission 2014 clearly indicates that the RSS which used to play a fringe role in giving broader guidelines and directions till now, seems to get actively involved. Now, the Sangh Agenda would have to be carried out by the BJP.
It is clear that the Sangh Parivar has been careful in giving prime responsibilities only to those people who come from the RSS cradle. Dr Murli Manohar Joshi having been given the charge of preparing BJP manifesto and Nitin Gadkari entrusted with the responsibility of ‘vision Document” corroborates it.
Equally interesting is the fact that no one has been given the responsibility of looking for allies for the NDA. In the same way, Lk Adavni has been made the ‘Bhishma Pitamaha’ and none of his acolytes including Sushma Swaraj, Yashwant Sinha, Anant kumar and others have been made the head of any particular team or department. They have been coiled up by Modi confidants.
“In this game, Mr Advani has been totally sidelined” quipped an insider, adding that the 36 hour delay in announcing the team was because many senior leaders were not prepared to work under Modi. So, a compromise formula was worked out with the intervention of RSS Chief and that is how a gigantic size of committees.”
There were terse exchanges on the question of Hindutva as well and there too, the Sangh appears to have played a significant role. The BJP is now looking towards Hindutva as a potent weapon to polarize Hindu votes particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Team Modi is looking towards at least 25 seats from UP alone and that is how a hardliner like Amit Shah has been pitchforked there. There are also indications that the Sangh has apparently decided not to field any candidate above 72 years of age and that is how both Adavni and Murli Manohar Joshi are not likely to get the party nomination in 2014.
Now it is loud and clear that Hindutva will be the campaign tune of the BJP, not so much development, governance or even corruption. The other three issues will end up as fillers in the primary discourse. It is rather curious that Modi as the poll campaign committee head of the BJP, who has made a reputation for himself by emphasizing the issues of corruption, governance and development – the weakest points of the Congress – would bring the Hindutva question into the mix so early in the day.
It is also possible that the BJP now understands that there’s no escaping the communal tag. The more the Gujarat cases hog the national headlines, the more the BJP would come under the scrutiny of minorities. So it’s wiser to go for pre-emptive damage control by not being ambiguous on the subject. The projection of Modi as a Hindu nationalist leader, thus, is a strategic decision. It provides an ideological shield against many uncomfortable questions that might crop up later.
Moreover, the BJP appears to have calculated that the issues of corruption, governance and development have resonance only in urban areas. The rural areas from where the bulk of parliamentary seats lie have other worries. Rural India is doing better economically and developing, courtesy more efficient state governments, and thus, topics like Misgovernance and development would not cut much ice with the electorate there.
The party needs something emotive to make the rural voters look up and take notice and Hindutva fits in here because of its pan-Indian appeal. However, the Hindutva bogey could cause collateral damage. While it offers the BJP an overarching ideological position to go to the elections, it also allows the Congress get off the hook. Corruption, governance and development are valid electoral issues and by harping on them for sometime, the BJP had generated some positive response for itself. The Congress, which had been on the back foot over two years over these issues, appears to have found some respite of late after the talking point shifted to Hindutva.
It is here that Modi appears to have lost the plot. A day after he launched a broadside against the government for many of its failures; it came out with enough unflattering numbers to blunt his charges. The battery of Congress functionaries raised direct questions on Modi’s track record of governance in Gujarat which has glaring loopholes .Perhaps Modi is the lifeline the Congress was so desperately looking for.
With Modi at the helm BJP’s focus has shifted from corruption and misgovernance, which should have been the party’s strongest talking point in the run up to the polls, and veered into avoidable controversial subjects such as secularism where it stands on shaky ground. The more Modi would speak, the more sound and fury he would generate and equally strong rebuttal from the Congress would hit him. Precisely, that is the opportunity and trap which the Congress party has been looking for.
Also with Modi, the electoral campaign from the BJP’s point of view, is getting too personalised. Modi has been hogging all the attention and there appears little space for other seniors in the party. It does not help that he refuses to stop tom-toming about his ‘achievements’ in Gujarat at all fora. At this rate, the 2014 elections end up becoming Modi vs the rest rather than the BJP vs Congress.
A belligerent Congress party, would dig on more about Modi’s Gujarat and contest his every claim on good governance and development model. It would not only puncture his ‘development messiah halo’ but also damage the entire BJP poll plank because the BJP cannot manage to swing the public opinion on the strength of the fiction of numbers alone. !
However, the Team Modi appears to have started getting shocks from the day one. Shiv Sena has reservations on Modi being named as the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate. Secondly, Rajnath Singh and Mohan Bhagwat’s “English bashing” would be disastrous for the BJP in the coming days. Bhagwat’s statement that “it is an illusion that English is the only means of progress. Maximum cases of corruption and irregularities are committed by the educated” is bound to invite outrage and indignation from the urban youth and the educated middle class which has been the biggest support base for Modi on the social media hub.
Is it another way of undermining the Modi machine? Or is it a well calculated game of Rajnath Singh to have the cake and eat it too.? Only time would tell but there is no doubt that Rajanth Singh is an extremely shrewd player. He is aware that if Modi machine loses the 2014, then the whole blame would go on Modi alone as the driver of the BJP campaign.
On the other hand, if Modi and his team is able to trounce the Congress and get a respectable number of LS seats in 2014 then Rajnath Singh would pat his back saying that it was he who played the gamble with Modi despite opposition from many quarters within the BJP ranks.
Rajnath Singh also fancies the chance of emerging as the consensus candidate in between Advani and Modi in case other NDA allies put a spoke in Modi’s plans.
With Lok Sbha polls almost nine months away, there would be many myths shattered and many new combinations and collaborations would emerge. It remains to be seen how the Modi Machine would deal with those things. (Concluded)
(Posted on July 21, 2013 @ 6.00pm)
(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> )
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