Would “Modi magic” alone be enough for BJP??

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Ajay N Jha

ENARADA, New Delhi

By AJAY N JHA

A prominent newspaper quoted RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat saying that if the BJP did not get majority to make Narendra Modi as the PM, then it would prefer to sit in opposition.

Bhagwat’s reported statement can be interpreted in both ways. One way of looking at it is that the RSS is leaving nothing to chance in promoting and playing the Modi trump card which it thinks would help the BJP cross the 272+ barrier. The other way is to read in between the lines where the RSS Chief also makes it clear that the BJP would have to reconcile to sitting in the opposition than thinking of combing up a front of like-minded parties to form the government. This also means that the Sangh does not seem to be particularly enthused about trying either Advani or Rajnath Singh as consensus candidate for the PM’s post in case the absence of a decisive electoral verdict throws up a fractured mandate like 1996 or 1998.

The  BJP appears to have already made a few course correction from “ Har Har Modi- Ghar Ghar  Modi” to  “Ab ki baar Modi Sarkar” and the  latest tagline of BJP leaders is “mujhe vote do, main tumhe Modi doonga”( vote for me and I would give you Modi). This is the extension of Modi’s own statement saying “mujhe vote do, main tumhe vikas doonga (vote for me and I will give you development)”.

For several party candidates their fate in the election seems to be hinged to the party’s prime ministerial candidate. In the Muslim, Dalit and Jat dominated western Uttar Pradesh, BJP candidates are banking on one word “Modi” to break caste barriers in an election revolving around polarisation and development. “We want Modi”, is a commonly used line by people to express their support for Modi in the constituencies, which go to polls in the first two phases of election, as candidates, party and its symbol, lotus, fade into the background.

In the Modi chant, local leaders, caste affiliations and performance of MPs seeking a second term are being tuned out. It’s a parallel drawn from 1977 elections post-Emergency, when candidates, caste and creed had become insignificant in the anti- Congress wave.

Sociologist Dipankar Gupta says Modi has done to the BJP what Indira Gandhi did to Congress. “This election is not BJP versus Congress. It’s Modi versus everyone else. One fight is Modi with the rest and the other Modi with the party. In both, the common factor is Modi and the BJP is of no consequence,” he says.

Apart from his aggressive and high tech campaign which   already appears to have caught the attention and imagination of a vast chunk of voters across the country for Modi, the Sangh has also tried to send a clear signal by expelling Jaswant Singh and Subhas Maheria that it would not brook any nonsense beyond a point.

Not only BJP threw out new entrantslike Pramod Muthalik and Sabir Ali in face of stiff resistance from within, it is also going to make sure that Imran Masood’s statement would do nothing to dent Modi who would be happy to use to it to play victim and pander to the majority Hindus voter’s sentiments across the country. This kind of polarization tactics may prove a big headache for the congress clinging to the minority card but widen the ambit of vote base for BJP.

However, the BJP is treading the path cautiously and that too under the eagle eye watch of the Sangh which has already called upon all its Pracharaks and functionaries to fan across the country and contribute their might. Yet it is not too sure of the poll verdict and some nagging doubts still remain in the minds of a few leaders. The Interview of BJP President Rajnath Singh to Indian Express saying that “he would prefer continuing as BJP’s national president after LS polls and decisions on the role senior party leaders in the government would be taken by Modi” could be seen and explained in this context.

It would be pertinent to examine just four States including Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka to underscore the BJP’s discomfiture and anxiety and a lurking fear that it may not be able to cross the bridge comfortably.

Jharkhand was one State where alliance with Babulal Marandi would have given a formidable position to BJP and it would have been able to win at least 7 to 10 seats out of the total of 14. BJP President’s ostrich-like approach appears to have been the cause and the result is that BJP”s final tally of seats would fall short by at least 5 to 6 seats from that State.

Bihar is another state where the BJP is expecting at least 20 to 30 out of the total of 40 seats on the strength of its fresh alliance with LJP and Dalit votes. However, caste engineering formula of the BJP seems to be backfiring on it in Bihar. In a major change of strategy this time, the party reached out to the vast community of backward voters, creating a grand social coalition. The purpose was to shed the Brahmin-Baniya identity of the party and gain acceptability among the communities hitherto left out of the party’s scheme of things. It even made use of the caste of Narendra Modi, the party’s prime ministerial candidate, to reach out to different sections of the voters.

The eagerness to win the support of the politically significant backward community was apparent when Modi at one of his recent rallies held at Muzaffarpur on 3 March, claimed everyone was stumped when the BJP, which is generally known as a party of ‘Baniya’ (businessmen) and ‘Brahmins’ declared someone from the backward class as its PM candidate. He went on to add that in the coming decades, the party will focus on the backward communities, Dalits, oppressed and downtrodden classes.

The message was clear—the BJP wanted to get the solid backing of the backward communities to make a clean sweep in Bihar now that it already enjoys the blessings of the upper class people. The strategy seems to have delivered in terms of new allies. But in the bargain, the BJP appears to have left the powerful upper castes, its core vote base, angry and disturbed. The anger has intensified after the distribution of tickets. The upper caste leaders, who once enjoyed a privileged position in the party, have now started revolting against the party leadership after finding that they have been sidelined in the ticket distribution.

Many Bihar watchers admit that, there are already too many claimants for the backward votes, including Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. They find it strange to see the BJP taking no care of its core support base and going for experiment at this crucial moment. This is surely not the time for experiments…the BJP is badly spoiling its winning chances.

Many upper caste leaders, such as Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Choube – former ministers who were the first to endorse the name of Modi for the PM post – Ramadhar Singh, Suresh Sharma, Chandra Mohan Rai, Usha Vidyarthi and many others are said to be displeased over the marginalisation of upper caste leaders in the party. None of these fuming leaders has been given tickets except for Giriraj Singh. Although Singh was given ticket, his constituency has been changed. Singh wanted to contest from central Bihar’s Begusarai seat but was fielded from southern Bihar’s Nawada seat. He pleaded hard with the top leadership to change his constituency but his appeal cut no ice.

Many BJP aspirants wanted to try their luck in the general elections as the momentum favoured the BJP. For the first time in many years, the party had the opportunity to put up its candidates in all 40 LS seats. These leaders had already started grooming their respective constituencies and invested considerable effort in it. All of a sudden they are out in the cold. The party, in its new-found zeal to broaden its social base, has given preference to outsiders, party hoppers and turncoats.

The BJP had to leave alone 10 Lok Sabha seats after it chose to enter electoral understanding with the parties of Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan and backward leader Upendra Kushwaha, leaving the party content with only 30 seats. The party leaders were still hopeful of getting the chance but the first list shattered their hopes further as the party lost another nine seats to outsiders, leaving barely 21 seats for its own leaders. Of the 25 candidates figuring on the first list of the party, nine are outsiders— four of them such who joined the BJP barely few days back and were highly critical of Modi and the BJP, such as Ram Kripal Yadav, Sushil Kumar Singh, Ajay Nishad and Chhedi Paswan.

No wonder then that former Health minister Ashwini Choubey fumed saying: “The BJP will pay the price for ignoring its old, loyal and committed workers. The party liberally gave seats to others without taking into considerations the existing caste and social equations of the constituencies and claims of its own leaders”.

Observers say the entire mess could be due to Bihar’s puzzling caste equations and hence BJP strategists have used various tricks to rope in various caste groups other than its traditional voters. The amount of attention the BJP leadership has given to Bihar is evident from the fact that first they effected a defection in the UPA camp and got the LJP on board. Then it went all out to woo a number of leaders, such as Upendra Kushwaha, Vijay Kumar Kushwaha (husband of industry minister Renu Kushwaha who resigned from Nitish Kumar cabinet earlier this week), Ram Kripal Yadav and Nawal Kishore Yadav and other backward community leaders.  As a result, the overall tally of expected seats may not even go beyond 16 seats in Bihar for BJP.

In the same way, the ticket distribution in Uttar Pradesh left many BJP aspirants high and dry. Senior leader like Kalraj Mishra  and Murli Mahohar Joshi were shifted out of their earlier seats, BJP President Rajnath Singh quit Ghaziabad and pitch-forked himself at equally symbolic seat of Lucknow for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Yet, he could face a somewhat uphill battle if a caste alliance backing him wavers. Singh, from the Thakur community, is someone the Brahmin community in Uttar Pradesh reportedly isn’t taking too kindly to, especially given the fear that he may be the compromise prime ministerial candidate in the event that Modi is deemed unacceptable to potential alliance partners. While the Thakur community dismisses this as conjecture, the simmering distrust from the Brahmin community could make Lucknow a closer contest than Singh would like.

Rajnath Singh has traditionally never enjoyed the backing of the Brahmin community in the state ever since he was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and at the time faced attempts by community leaders to unseat him. BJP officials have also claimed in the past that Singh has been increasing the number of

Thakur community members in the party, particularly former bureaucrats and leaders, in order to increase his influence. Among them include former Army chief VK Singh, ex-home secretary RK Singh and former Congress leader Jadambika Pal.

The Brahmin community is widely expected to stand behind the BJP and constitutes around 15 percent of the population in Uttar Pradesh. But the fact that the Muslim community constitutes around 30 percent in the seat, and he isn’t certain of their vote, means Singh would need to ensure the Brahmin community stands firmly behind him during the poll. It doesn’t help that all his major opponents, from the Congress and BSP, are from the Brahmin community and the Samajwadi Party also strengthened its candidate from the seat to make his path to the Lok Sabha tougher.

The Samajwadi Party changed its candidate to Akhilesh Mishra, an aide of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, in order to present Singh a stronger challenge. The law of averages isn’t in favour of the BJP president either.  Historically, a non-Brahmin candidate has won only during three elections in all the elections since 1951.  Rajnath Singh has been repeatedly trying to bring up the legacy of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a five time MP from the city, multiple times while announcing his candidature from Lucknow but the BJP stalwart was also from the Brahmin community. The man he displaced to contest from the constituency, Lalji Tandon, is one of just three non-Brahmin candidates to win from the seat and was seen as being closer to Vajpayee than Singh is.

The BJP President is also reaching out backward castes and the Muslim community to secure his victory not only for him but other seats in the state as well. If it all falls in place, Rajnath Singh may not only ensure a better tally for the BJP but could also cement his position as the second in line after the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

However, the undercurrent of caste and community considerations operate at an entirely different level in Uttar Pradesh and even a slight slip-up may disturb the whole poll arithmetic. In other words, would Rajnath Singh may as well end up being another DR G Parmeshwar of Karnataka who led the party to a splendid victory in the May 2013 State elections but lost his own Kortegere Assembly seat?

The BJP has kept its target of at least 45 to 50 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Modi in Varanasi would no doubt be the clincher but BJP leaders have not yet explained how Modi’s mere candidate from  the historic temple town would ensure wins for random BJP candidates in UP. The logic put forward is that the deeply entrenched caste politics which has long shaped electoral outcomes in the Cow Belt state, may stump the so-called Modi wave. How can the Modi wave account for the multiple factors that come into play in UP?

If the BJP led NDA could come to power in 1998-2004, it was mainly because of BJP getting a large number of seats. But both SP and BSP stopped the BJP surge both in 2004 and 2009.  These two parties have more or less maintained a chokehold over their respective vote-banks of the backward castes and the Dalits regardless of a rout or a landslide win for either and there is no reason to believe that these two parties could come popper in 2014 polls.

Secondly, BJP’s poll share in UP has remained quite low in both 2004 and 2009 LS polls and it did not do very well in 2012 Assembly polls either. BJP would need at least a spectacular increase of 12 to 15 percent votes share to stay in the hunt/ Even a marginally low vote share can wreak havoc in a multi corner contest.

On the other hand, Karnataka was a State where BJP could get 19 out of the total of 28 seats in 2009 polls. While a few poll surveys still give BJP 20 out of 28 seats, the fact remains that even the injection of BS Yeddiurappa and BS Sriramulu as “fresh elixirs” is not going to make much of a difference. The Congress party government led by Siddaramaiah has by and large maintained a clean record. There has been no major scandal against the government so far even as there are pockets of discontent within the Congress party.

Said a veteran commentator from Bangalore, “while Sidharamaiah would be behaving like Marcopolo and KPCC president Dr G Paramaeshwar like Gulliver in his quest for more grants and facilities to SC/ST folks in Karnataka and DK Shivakumar would be playing Don Juan, the fact remains that the Congress party is still in a better position to wrest at least 15 to 16 seats in the State”.

This is echoed by the state of a middle BJP functionary from Karnataka who admitted that retaining 19 seats in the State of Karnataka would indeed be a tall order. In his opinion, the BJP may be able to get at least 12 to 13 seats if things go as per plan.

That explains the emerging scenario across the country for the BJP. There is no doubt that the voters of this country are looking for a change.  However, it is too early to draw a conclusion if the Modi Magic alone would be enough for the BJP and RSS to sail through the target of 272 plus seats. But then, politics has always been regarded as the art of impossible and last minute change in voters’ resolve and perception can turn many calculations upside down.

(Posted on March 30, 2014 @ 11am)

(Ajay N Jha is a veteran journalist from both Print and Electronic media.  He is Advisor to Prasar Bharti. The views expressed are his personal. 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.

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