by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, BJP"s spectacular
victory was attributed to a "Modi wave" because of the decisive
nature of the result. With BJP winning 282 seats on its own, it was the first
time in 25 years that a single party could gain majority in the parliament.
Before him no party other than the Congress, and the post-emergency Janata
Party, could cross the victory line of 272 seats. Political pundits had assumed
that the polity would remain balkanised. Modi proved them wrong. And that gave
rise to the popular conviction that it could not be due to BJP"s merit
alone; it was due to a "Modi wave" that blew across the nation.
But will the wave last through the upcoming elections,
notably for the assemblies of Maharashtra, the
richest state, and Haryana, which has undergone a rapid transformation from
agriculture to service and industry? Besides, will Modi"s popularity
sustain beyond the assembly elections, through the subsequent years of his
leadership of government? It is a fact that the BJP did not appear to be
anchored in concrete in the ongoing round of assembly by-elections at least
till last week (when this article was written), having won in only four of the
10 seats in Bihar that went to poll recently.
However, by-elections are hardly the bellwether to gauge
the mood of the nation. Elections for assemblies of mainline states are a
somewhat different matter. Because assembly polls hinge on a face, which is
that of a state"s towering political personality, they have the potential
to throw up national figures. Modi himself graduated from a state leader.
Vishwanath Pratap Singh was essentially a state leader who successfully
challenged his Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
It is in this context that the future of the so-called
"Modi wave" should be gauged. Who are Modi"s challengers left on
the ring? Are they all in full form and in a position to turn every lapse of
the Union Government to his or her favour? In 2004, the Vajpayee-led NDA
government fell because by then Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, had
cobbled together a large enough alliance of parties opposed to BJP whose
constituents wanted NDA to exit from power at any cost. Is a similar
counter-wave building up against Modi?
Doubtful. The Congress today is stung by its humiliating
defeat and the consequent leadership crisis. It will be some time that it can
gather enough self-confidence to take on a opponent of Modi"s stature. The
biggest problem of Congress is that, with Vice President Rahul Gandhi not able
to make a mark as boss, and his mother, Sonia, not keeping well, for some time,
it must look for new life. But it cannot do that because it is a divided house
and an image deficit across the board has turned it into something like the
house of the seven dwarfs that Snow White had discovered in the forest.
Besides, the popular expectation that Prime Minister Modi is bent on bringing
about systemic changes in governance is still high. It is therefore premature,
to say the least, to expect that either Maharashtra
or Haryana will throw up a verdict that gives NDA cold comfort.
Beyond Maharashtra, the anti-NDA national leaders are all
so hobbled that none of them can hope to fight back any time soon, if not ever.
Jayalalitha, the AIADMK supremo, should by now be trembling to hear the verdict
of the CBI court in end-September on the ongoing graft cases against her to
engage in any sparring with Modi. Her D-day is September 23 and she is a scared
person today. Things are no better with Mayawati, yet another ambitious leader.
In the UPA period she had almost managed to get the Income Tax and
disproportionate assets cases against her leave in a frozen state. Come NDA,
and judicial activism has brought the cases back to life. So dispirited is she
that her party BSP did not put up candidate in any of the 11 assembly
constituencies in Uttar Pradesh where by-elections were held, knowing well that
in the absence of her party"s elephant symbol it is quite likely that most
of her Dalit voters would press on BJP"s "lotus". She is going
alone in Maharashtra and Haryana. Going by
revelations of CBI Director Ranjit Sinha"s famous "guest book",
Mayawati"s confidante S. C. Mishra visited the top cop"s residence,
so high is the level of anxiety in the mind of bahenji, once considered indestructible
as granite.
In Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee, who was once regarded as an
icon of simplicity and integrity, is now so inextricably embroiled in a scam
involving plunder of a Ponzi scheme that her popularity is at its lowest in her
state. The condition of Mulayam Singh Yadav, once a symbol of secularism, is no
better. In Uttar Pradesh, two years of hellish mis-governance by Akhilesh,
Mulayam's swell-head son and chief minister, has reduced his own stature to a
ridiculously low level. In Bihar, Lalu Yadav
is on bail and hearings on his appeal will commence soon. It will surely churn
up much of the dirt from his past. By embracing him in a marriage of convenience,
Nitish Kumar, the only secular person who had the moral credential to challenge
Modi, has scored a self-goal by siding with corrupt Lalu.
Modi's
pull is sustaining because of the hypocrisy and self-deception on which the
capital's politics is based. Tainted leaders who deserved to be in prison cell
could use their clout to paralyse the judicial process and strut about like big
shot. Such a vain political class had to go some day. It is strange that it
could survive so long. The Modi wave of course needs a counter wave. Just as
democracy is meaningless without an opposition. But it has to be reborn and
rise, like Phoenix.
Who are Modi"s challengers
left on the ring to
create a counter-wave ?
