| by B.Raman
( December 21,
2012, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The BJP leaders should stop building castles
in the air.
( 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 )
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