Before catapulting Modi to NDA’s top job, his supporters need to answer if he has emerged as a credible pan-India leader
The most regrettable feature of the unseemly exercise in one-upmanship, marked by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's anointment as chairman of the BJP’s Election Campaign Committee for the 2014 lok Sabha poll, is the obvious desire of one faction to delink itself abruptly from the past. It is a past that is mirrored in the present, and is likely to shape the future. The BJP was propelled to centrestage by the mounting Ramjanmabhumi campaign in the 1980s. The mantle of leading this campaign fell on Mr lK Advani, when he steered the Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra. By now seeking to stifle the veteran leader's voice, aggressive advocates of change seem to have over-played their hand. For, Mr Modi, though an able administrator and undoubted nationalist, still has many detractors outside his home State Gujarat. It is unrealistic to expect a Modi wave to sweep India in the next general election, given the differing issues and sensibilities that drive regional politics. Mr Modi's brand of populism may not appeal to voters in, say, Kerala, India's North-East, with its sizeable Christian population, Odisha, or even West Bengal. The cow belt, contained in the northern swathe, is swayed by a wide range of issues and satraps, with fiercely loyal followers.
Where the strident Modi brigade has erred is in taking the voting proclivities of the vast electorate, fragmented on caste/identity/regional lines, for granted. An electoral sweep in Gujarat, and recent BJP win in six by-polls, is no guarantee of an impending tsunami swamping the Centre. All that Mr Advani asked for, in addition to the committee for the general election, was a committee for Assembly polls, to be headed by Mr Nitin Gadkari. Since this proposal was ignored, he was forced to guard his dignity by staying away from the Goa National Executive meet and later, resigning from the BJP's Parliamentary Board, National Executive and Election Committee. The fact that the Parliamentary Board turned down his resignation stems from the belated realisation that Mr Advani represents continuity in a party, buffeted by impatient and untested forces of change, with some enthusiastic greenhorns trying to lay down the electoral agenda.
They perhaps need to draw a lesson from the Congress, which still survives as a cohesive unit because it is centred on a dynasty, a family that is both a strong cementing factor and symbol of continuity. It may be undemocratic but it works to keep the party in power. That is why Congress president Sonia Gandhi is allowed to run a shadow Cabinet, in the form of the National Advisory Council, crammed with civil activists and their ilk. This extra-constitutional body is a dual power centre, operating parallel to the constitutionally approved Government, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Formed on June 4, 2004, during the Congress-led UPA regime's first term, it was meant to ensure implementation of the coalition's national Common Minimum Programme. The NAC’s chairperson, Ms Gandhi, was forced to resign over the office of profit controversy on March 23, 2006. But she returned to the post on March 29, 2010. The NAC has pushed important welfare policies and programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment scheme, guaranteeing three months employment to unskilled rural labour, food security and the like.
The schism in the BJP could easily be forded via a similar power-sharing formula between the old guard and the emergent leadership. The UPA's Prime Minister-headed cabal panders to global economic drivers while the Ms Gandhi-headed NAC peddles socialist rhetoric and policies. This is intended to satisfy both the reforms lobby and the old guard by balancing the compulsions and objectives of the two camps. If dual power centres have worked for the UPA, they can also work for the BJP-led NDA. The coalition needs to devise its own NAC. Significantly, while resigning, Mr Advani did not quit as working chairman of the NDA. He seemed to have been motivated to continue in the post in the larger interests of the coalition he heads. Ms Gandhi is both NAC chairperson and UPA chairperson.
Before attempting to ride roughshod over senior leaders, violating all decorum, so as to catapult Mr Modi as NDA’s prime ministerial candidate, his supporters need to address this question: Has he emerged as a credible pan-India leaderIJ The intense public relations drive certainly manages to project him as a mass leader. But it would be edifying to point out that howsoever popular he may be in his State, Gujarat is not India. Sensibilities and concerns vary in an important way in different States.
The high growth and development rhetoric, combined with the Hindutva agenda, that have spurred Mr Modi and the BJP to victory in Assembly elections for the third time are unlikely to work in, say, West Bengal, where the Communists were banished for encroaching on land rights so as to spur growth. Nor is identity politics a game-changer there.
These differences need to be factored into the BJP election strategy.