Or you could tweak the headline to ‘The man India needs’. Nothing, absolutely nothing, must be allowed to come in the way of this nation’s aspiration
Conversations at social gatherings should be neither recorded nor reported, not the least because a lot is said among friends in a congenial atmosphere and the banter is often no more than idle tittle-tattle. There is also that other reason which we tend to forget — many who confide in you at such gatherings do so firm in the belief that what they have said would not be shared with others. This is especially true for those who are given to a political persuasion different from yours. For example, a high-ranking office-bearer, Minister or MP, whose declared loyalty is to the first family of the Congress, would baulk at the thought of his or her no-holds-barred rant against Sonia Gandhi and bitter bitching about how Rahul Gandhi has led the party into a dark and bleak wilderness being retold with appropriate attribution. This would be equally true for senior journalists and editors who are in competition with Mani Shankar Aiyar for the honour of being appointed chief khidmatgar at the Palace. People live up to the aphorism ‘in goes the liquor, out comes the truth’ — the wise stick to sipping insipid red wine — but an unwritten code of honour prohibits retelling of the truth. If it is to be retold because the temptation to tattle is too strong to overcome, the truth would need to be carefully sanitised and attribution would be an absolute no-no. That’s a good thumb rule to follow without burdening your conscience or falling foul of friends.
I happened to spend the evening (actually an evening that stretched well into the night) at last week’s most important event on Delhi’s social calendar — probably the biggest event this season. The conversation was great, the food was even better. The who’s who of Delhi, apart from India’s movers and shakers, were present in full measure. As always, it was nice to see politicians drop their pretences and succumb to minor vices, the source of simple human pleasures. With a general election round the corner, the conversation invariably revolved around the main contenders for power and possible outcomes. I tried to fob off the politically promiscuous usual suspects —there’s no shortage of them in this city and they come in various shades of venality — since there was no purpose served in listening to their cringe-worthy flattery of the claimants to the masnad of Delhi. Instead, I flitted from group to group of known — and unwavering — critics of the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate
Narendra Modi. There were three common points in what they told me. First, there’s a massive Modi wave surging from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. A pollster whose polling skills are irreproachable used the adjective ‘unprecedented’ — in his words, “There’s an unprecedented Modi wave sweeping the country.” Second, the BJP could easily touch a tally of 220 and even go beyond that provided it selects its candidates carefully and deploys all its forces on the ground before and on polling day. Getting the voter out would be the clincher in this election — if the BJP fails on this front, the results could go any which way and the party would have only itself to blame. Third, the Congress is headed for its worst electoral defeat; the party faces decimation. Yes, the Aam Aadmi Party was mentioned but in passing reference. Curiously, or perhaps not, senior foreign diplomats, among them Ambassadors and High
Commissioners, were more eager to talk about AAP than others; most of them wanted to be reassured that the upstarts would not score more than a dozen seats. It’s possible such un-cordial feelings of the expatriate community of Chanakyapuri towards the AAP are not shared by the Americans, but that’s a story to be told another day.
Anecdotal evidence of how well (or otherwise) a party’s election campaign is taking shape cannot be a substitute for empirical evidence culled from the ground. But if popular perception matters in politics and if the English-speaking chattering classes of urban India indeed wield disproportionate power to mould voter opinion, then anecdotal evidence gathered that evening indicates Narendra Modi is riding a popularity wave whose crest could be higher than that of the Vajpayee wave in 1998-1999. If the Vajpayee wave could propel the BJP to power in two subsequent general elections, it could be argued, then there’s no reason to disbelieve that a Modi wave will sweep the BJP to power in 2014. The various opinion polls indicate a similar trend — the latest poll shows Narendra Modi’s popularity rating is more than thrice that of a very distant Rahul Gandhi in the heartland. The counter argument to such assertions is that in 2004 the BJP lost the general election despite Atal Bihari Vajpayee remaining at the top, and way ahead of others, in the popularity charts. Certitude of victory can make politicians and political parties organisations complacent and, as we all know, complacence is the surest, shortest route to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Key takeaway: The BJP, as an organisation, cannot afford to rest easy between now and polling day.
There is no gainsaying that candidate selection plays a key role in determining the outcome of any election, more so a lok Sabha poll. If the candidate does not inspire confidence then a leader’s popularity alone cannot ensure victory. The mass rejection of sitting MPs in 2004 and 2009 proves this point. The only exception to the rule was in 1977 which was a ‘lamp post election’ — the Janata Party’s symbol mattered more than the person contesting on that symbol. Every election tends to disprove pundits and it is entirely possible 2014 could well turn out to be a ‘lamp post election’ with voters voting for Narendra Modi, but that is something we will get to know only after the results are declared. let us not forget Indira Gandhi did not expect to lose the 1977 election; it’s only after Amethi and Rae Bareli spurned the Nehru Dynasty did realisation of the enormity of the defeat sink in. That the collapse of the Congress this time will be spectacular is a no-brainer, but the exact extent of that collapse will be known after the last of the results is in. Nevertheless, it would in order to ask: Is the BJP filling the political vacuum with the speed with which it is being created by the collapse of the CongressIJ
In 1998 I had interviewed Atal Bihari Vajpayee which was published under the evocative headline “The man India awaits.” Sixteen years later, that same headline could be used as a slogan for Narendra Modi — he is the man India awaits. Indeed, it could be tweaked to “The man India needs” — to restore confidence in
Government, to resuscitate the economy, to reinstate faith in our entrepreneurial spirit, to return to the trajectory of India’s dazzling rise during the NDA years, to remind the world that this great nation will contribute to the shaping of the 21st century. Nothing must come between the aspiration of the masses and the outcome of this election. The BJP alone can ensure this.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)