B.RAMAN
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reasons to be
concerned over the results of the elections to the State Assemblies of Gujarat
and Himachal Pradesh announced on December 20,2012.
2.The elections were preceded by a sustained
campaign based on allegations of corruption against the Government of Dr.Manmohan Singh, and
some Congress leaders of Himachal Pradesh They were also preceded by a steady
increase in inflation and by the economy reaching a road-block. The campaign of
Anna Hazare and the anti-corruption activists headed by Shri Arvind Kejriwal
since August last year was mainly directed against Congress misgovernance.
3.Many of us formed the perception that the public
disenchantment against the Congress was so strong that its electoral defeat in
the various elections to the State Assemblies and to the Lok Sabha in 2014
would be certain. We were surprised when public opinion polls held in some
states a few months ago indicated that the disenchantment with the Congress was
not as widespread as one thought it would be and that any disenchantment that
did exist had not translated itself into enchantment with the BJP.I had pointed
out in earlier articles and tweets that
the BJP had not been a beneficiary of any disenchantment with the Congress.
4. This was because of public skepticism over the
capability of the BJP to set right matters and over the internal mess in its organization
in States such as Karnataka. It was apparent that campaigns solely based on
allegations of corruption and criticism of the dynasty rule were not making
headway with the rural and small town voters. Signs of a creeping
disillusionment with the BJP were there for all to see if only they wanted to see
them.
5.The results of the elections to the Gujarat and
HP State Assemblies clearly show that these misgivings were not ill-based. The
elections to the Gujarat Assembly were preceded by months of a high-voltage
campaign mounted by a group of Gujarati whiz-kids from the diaspora in the US
to project NaMo as the coming saviour of India, who had performed economic miracles
in Gujarat, which he was destined to repeat in New Delhi after gravitating to
New Delhi and taking over as the Prime Minister of India following the 2014
elections.
6. NaMo willingly and uncritically allowed these
whiz-kids from abroad and their associates in Gujarat to project him in a new
designer-made personality as the development man, as India’s man of economic
miracles, as the ruler who turned Gujarat into India’s Guangdong.
Interestingly, some of these Hindutva whiz-kids from the US were earlier
associated with some Telugu whiz-kids from Andhra Pradesh in the US, who had
mounted a campaign some years ago to project Shri Chandra Babu Naidu, former
Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, as the man of the technology-based development
miracle sweeping across AP and as the coming saviour of India when the NDA
under Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee was in power.
7.These whiz-kids and NaMo had so convinced
themselves that Gujarat was shining under him that they created for themselves
an illusory world of unstoppable NaMo who was bound to sweep the polls in
Gujarat before moving on to New Delhi. Their exaggerated expectations, based on
hype and delusions, on the number of seats that NaMo was likely to get far
exceeding what he got in 2007 drove them blind to the ground reality.
8. The Congress poll strategists, advised by sons
of the soil analysts and not by imported whiz-kids, concluded that the strong
state of the BJP in Gujarat and its undoubted economic record and the poor
state of the Congress would not enable
them to prevent another NaMo victory. Their strategy was, therefore, designed
to devalue the significance of NaMo’s hat-trick.
9. Whatever NaMo’s spin-kids may say, his was not a
phenomenal victory. That NaMo himself realizes this is obvious from his remark
in the victory speech “ a victory is a victory, whether one gets 93 or more”. The
tone of his victory speech was that of an embarrassed leader whose Himalayan
expectations have been belied.
10.Two significant indicators of the Gujarat poll
results are the fact that the BJP got two seats less than in 2007 and
registered a fall of one per cent in its popular support (48 %).As against
this, the popular support of the Congress went up by one per cent to 40. The
poll results clearly show a saturation effect and the onset of a NaMo fatigue. NaMo’s
victory speech in Hindi was designed to conceal the signs of this fatigue and
to project the significance of his hat-trick against a pan-Indian instead of a purely
Gujarati background..NaMo is no longer the man going up and up and up. He is an
engine which is beginning to stall.
11.If the Gujarat results are significant purely
against the State perspective, the HP results are very significant from the pan-Indian
perspective against the background of the sustained anti-Congress and
anti-dynasty campaign mounted by the BJP. This campaign has failed to dent the
Congress image. The BJP has not been a beneficiary of this campaign and is
unlikely to be its beneficiary in other States too during the 2014 polls to the
Lok Sabha.
12. If the BJP does not revamp itself and design a
new poll strategy based on ground realities and not on imported myth and
delusions of diaspora origin, its hopes of returning to power in New Delhi in
2014 are likely to be belied. If its own chances of returning to power are so
weak, where is the question of NaMo assuming its leadership and becoming the
next PM. It will be premature and futile to analyse NaMo’s chances, when the
BJP’s own chances are questionable.
13. The BJP leaders should stop building castles in
the air. ( 21-12-12)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi, and , presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai,and Associate of the Chennai Centre For
China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com .Twitter @SORBONNE75 )
