Mandate 2009: Part 2: In search of the Right Strategy for the Right (Wing) Party

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s own flagship right wing party and I am loath to call it the Hindu Right Wing Party (since they know precious little about the Hindu way of life or its unique but subtle power of assimilation) has since the 2004 general elections, lost much of its sheen, steam and gloss.

If we thought nothing could defeat the BJP in 2004, who were riding high on the urban popularity rating chart and an entire election campaign epitomised by the India Shining Campaign, little did we, urban rats, housed in glass encased towers, hermitically sealed off from the real India, realise the power of the rural populace. The BJP got a historic thumbs down – a shock from which they have been unable to recover till date. Their predicament has been compounded by the sad loss of Pramod Mahajan, their master strategist, who not only made up the moderate face of the party but was responsible for micro-managing each local and state election that the BJP fought while they were in power with, on an average, very satisfactory results.

The current think tank at the BJP is not only woefully short of ideas but at times fatally fails to judge people’s emotions. Take the case of the Mumbai terror attacks – in their haste to show the UPA government in poor light, the whole of the BJP top brass led by Advani and closely followed by Modi landed when blood was still freely following. It left a very bad taste in the people’s mouth and I guess this was one of the major reasons why their rhetoric on terror and its risks never paid off, even if what was mouthed was largely true. Another instance of insanity running riot in the BJP camp was the Quixote (and an extremely ill-advised) attack on Manmohan Singh. He may be whatever else but no one can grudge his academic and intellectual credentials or his honesty and faithfulness to his country and office. Calling such an erudite person ‘nikkamma’ or a good-for-nothing was not done at all, and the country did not buy an iota of this grand Advani dictum.

The BJP, moreover, inspite of having the example of Narendra Modi – who has proved again and again that performance pays – did nothing to assure either the rural or the urban voters about the development agenda of the NDA government. Their constant harping on terror and the myth of a week Prime Minister ended up in not only eroding their voter base but landing with a much lower number of seats in the lower house.

Performance Mr. Advani, performance. That’s the order of the day. Please take a cue from your own chief ministers or your NDA ally Nitish Kumar. They will, I bet, vouch for it. No longer will complicated caste-religion combinations sway the masses as it once did. See the jolt that the detestable Mayawati received!

Mandate 2009: Part 1: Left (Out) in the cold!

Each time that India goes to vote, the outcome never fails to amaze me. For a country where 72.2% of its population is from rural hinterland and an overall literacy rate of around 61%, the foresight and uncanny sense of politics displayed by that a billion plus people is mind boggling. Every election result is a revelation by itself. If in 2004 no one expected the BJP not to come to power, this time around the mandate to the Congress party has stunned the Congressmen themselves let alone the intelligentsia. The guys who lost the most, this time around, were the Left parties who have been truly left out in the cold for the next five years. The Left parties, on a national level, led by obnoxious Comrade Prakash Karat had, over the period of the last five years, on a number of occasions, brought the government to a paralytic halt on just about every other issue that they took fancy to oppose. With the loud mouthed brigade fronted by A. B. Bhardhan (I deeply detest him and his arrogance) and his ilk following Karat step for step, they had even managed to unceremoniously elbow out political statesmen like Somnath Chatterjee, who as the speaker of the lower house not only exemplified the dignity of the chair but won everyone’s admiration for his bipartisan conduct of proceedings of a normally unruly house and a very vocal opposition. Karat and Co must rue the day they launched a vitriolic campaign to dislodge Somnath as the Speaker of the House. Whatever our politicians may be, they atleast acknowledge an honest man when they see one! and it is no different for the general populace that has blotched many a political party’s dream to forever have their hands on the arm twisting gadget. The Left got a through drubbing in both of their fiefdoms of Bengal and Kerala. Kerala is more understandable since these guys tend to switch their allegiance every five years but Bengal is where they got hurt the most. The Left which had risen as a phoenix over the ashes of the Congress had, over the passage of time and with a lot of water under the bridge, come of think of themselves as invincible. Their almost fanatic belief in their military style organisational prowess, the conversion of rigging and intimidation into a time-tested scientific process and their nose in the air behaviour proved to be their ultimate undoing. You simply can’t afford to alienate the people who vote you to power, can you? This arrogance was also manifest in the utter lack of strategy and diplomacy on the part of the intellectually bent Chief Minister, whose inapt handling of both the Singur and Nandigram crises drove the normally docile Bengali intelligentsia enmass into the, only too happy arms of Mamata Banerjee – famous for her not so clean nor artfully draped saree and her rabble rousing antics. Who thought that the Left would meet its nemesis in the hands of a Lady, whose only merit has been to throw earth shattering tantrums at the drop of the hat! It would be interesting to see how the Left reacts in Bengal with the assembly elections due in two years, which on a politicians calendar is no time at all.