Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remoulded the BJP with his efficient leadership and dexterity, writes Ajay Singh in his latest book
For some time now, the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its unwavering performance across India, particularly making inroads to the once considered ‘impregnable’ terrain of southern and North-eastern states, has been a subject of as much attention and deliberations among academic and scholarly community, policy-makers as common masses. In this context, Ajay Singh’s book ‘The Architect of the New BJP: How Narendra Modi Transformed the Party provides an insider’s account of how Prime Minister Narendra Modi transposed his highly organized and efficient leadership acumen into the broader context of Indian Politics, thereby, transforming the party’s performance and its support base. The author, while tracing the historical foundations of the party, examines both past and contemporary visions and contributions of many veterans, including Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, as well as the myriad challenges the party faced in consolidating its position in Indian politics. Through a blended research methodology consisting of extensive interviews with party workers, leaders and observers, and an analysis of instances of the different innovative experiments and display of organisational skills by PM Modi, the author traces his life journey. The author observes that since his very childhood, the predisposition of Modi to adapt and apply the learnings of his life– discipline and organisational skills -at every phase of his journey, starting from his association with RSS as a Pracharak, followed by the BJP as a General Secretary (organisation) of the Gujarat unit as well as National Level, as a Chief Minister of Gujarat to Prime Minister of India, has brought about transformational changes in the party.
In a detailed explication, the author reflects on the early experiments of Modi in building an alternate political force in the early 1990s in the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In the hindsight, a couple of reasons can be considered for the continued dominance of BJP in Indian Politics: first, values of discipline and organisational skills instilled among the party workers as well as the masses under Modi’s leadership have already developed deep roots, which will continue to facilitate the party’s strong hold even in the future. Second, many myths about the party, which constrained the party’s performance in the past, have already been dismantled with the successive victories in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, as well as states’ elections, which will further enable BJP to consolidate its position in the Indian political landscape.
Undoubtedly, Modi’s vision has elevated the party’s image transcending caste, urban and minority rhetoric. The success and future of the BJP will depend on the sustained commitment to what PM Modi calls the Mantra of Triveni, i.e. the convergence of three elements: the government’s actions, work ethics, and the service of the BJP workers. The book is an interesting read for anyone with deep curiosity to understand the role of leadership in bringing tremendous transformations in BJP, which in turn changed the discourse of politics in India. The ingenuity of PM Modi’s leadership quality can be aptly described, in the words of Joseph Nye, as ‘contextual intelligence’ - the ability of a leader to understand changing environments, discern and capitalise on trends, adapt and apply the flow of events to implement different strategies in different circumstances/ contexts. PM Modi’s ability to lead, organise, mobilise and capitalise have paved the way for greater transformations at both national and global level to build a ‘New Bharat’ capable of shaping world politics.
(The writer is Senior Consultant Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) New Delhi. The views expressed are personal)