A harried BJD pressed the panic button of ‘muscular aggression’ ahead of an emerging BJP challenge in the panchayat polls in the State.
The party which played the ‘martyrdom’ card of so-called Central negligence and a ‘physical aggression’ in earlier successive elections to tide over the UPA challenge seems to have changed tack this time and latched on to ‘muscular aggression’ and in the meantime sacrificed the ‘martyrdom’ crown in a platter to the BJP when its ‘indulgent’ activists not only black-flagged but, in a first of kind, stoned Union Ministers’ carcade.
In electoral politics, ‘aggression’ and ‘martyrdom’ are considered to be the clinchers of title war. However, the demand of electoral politics is to up the tearing ‘aggression’ on the Opposition via deliverable policies and goals, not the ‘muscular’ type which the BJD latched on to this time. Even, ‘jugular aggression’ or a ‘shouting match’ without a tangible policy backup would also meet the doom in electoral politics.
For a political party reigning the State for such a longer stint has to have a knowhow of the basic tricks of electoral politics, and the way the BJD responds to the Opposition challenge smacks of jitteriness in the BJD camp.
What makes the BJD camp jittery is the daily popping out of mega controversies, a fall out of its ‘indulgent governance’, and over the top of it is the racing Modi challenge of ‘accountable governance’. In electoral politics, when a political party practises and mixes ‘indulgence’ and ‘nonchalance’ in governance, the ‘coherence’ in governance will become the ultimate victim, which looks to be the case now, or else the party which without a blink labelled ‘intolerant’ tag to the Congress when it was ‘egging’ on at BJD Ministers, and even the Chief Minister, stooped to stone pelting.
In fact, BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s actions, on the face of it, can hardly be tagged on as any sort of ‘indulgent’ governance. But, of late, his evolving ‘nonchalance’ in weeding out the messy fallouts of ‘indulgent governance’ of some of the BJD men does no good as it makes the BJD seen more of as a ‘political football’.
According to an old timer and BJD insider, the current predicament of the CM is a consequence of his trust-deficit on senior BJD aides. Moreover, Patnaik appears to have glossed over the loyalty factor, generated out of dedication to party ideals vis-a-vis loyalty out of sycophancy. The old timer warned, “Sycophancy-led loyalty only brings in the vice of ‘indulgence’ in governance, the disease that is gripping the BJD now quite acutely”.
For the Opposition camp, the CM’s ‘indecisive moment’ is proving a heavenly blessing so as to go for intensive sowing and harvesting rich electoral dividend in future. Undoubtedly, Modi at the helm has helped the BJP create at least a buzz around it in Odisha. Moreover, hijacking of the BJD’s Central negligence barb on touching issues like PDS rice by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has unnerved the BJD, which pushes it to commit more political blunders.