by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
What area elections? In fact what is representation politics all about? What important is the outcome of an election to the destiny of parties concerned?
For those of us who grew up in the profession in the ‘Mandal’ era of politics, with so many caste and community groups, elections were always a hair-trigger experience as no one would know which group would have a change of mind at the last moment. So it was a bit like betting big-time in the so-called Z-category shares, though recent SBI reforms have somewhat reduced their deadly volatility.
BJP and its unrelenting efforts to stabilise India’s electoral outcomes have produced stupendous results. If there is an election in the mainline Hindi-speaking states (39% of population) there is no percentage in guessing who has the ace. Off-mainland, the non-BJP states are still nestling with their traditional protectors, like Bengal with the Trinamool Congress, Odisha under the wings of the Biju Janata Dal of Naveen Patnaik Tamil Nadu under the twin Dravidian parties by rotation or Andhra Pradesh under regional satrap Chandrababu Naidu and a couple of more smaller states. The Congress is struggling to retain its last bastion in Karnataka. Elsewhere things are running riots.
In Uttarakhand, twice from Congress, former judge Vijay Bahuguna made it to the success pole in his state, yet fell short chief ministership in Dehra dun, a post that gracefully went to Trivendra Singh Rawat, an RSS old-timer. If at all, it proved that the parry’s ‘kremlin’, the troika of Amit Shah-Narendra Modi-RSS, would not deviate from their ideological fealty if possible. However, for Bahuguna, it was not unrelieved gloom as his sister, Rita Bahugna, once a determined spokesperson of the Congress is now minister in Yogi Adityanath ministry.
Despite this strict choice of class and caste, BJP kept its window remarkably open way back the days of Nitin Gadkari’s presidentship. Courtesy Gadkari and later Rajnath Singh with the blessings of the RSS, nearly 100 of the 282 Lok Sabha MPs (in 2014) did not belong to the BJP, or for that matter, had little o do with the party and its ‘lotus’ culture. Birendra Singh and Rao Inderjit Singh, both powerful ministers are iron men transported from Congress; one before the Lok Sabha polls and the other on the eve of Haryana Assembly elections. The BJP was always like a second fiddle to Devi Lal & Chautala and could hardly grew in the state. Therefore, the troika took a conscious decision to import talent lock, stock & barrel and give them ministerial berths too. Entry of Suresh Prabhu from Shiv Sena, a party that had little respect for his talent after his founder’s demise, and being inducted straightaway into the Railway Ministry. S.S. Ahluwalia, a ‘man for all seasons’, represent an elite induction hardly seen ever. The computer wiz kid of Rajiv Gandhi fell out with the Gandhis after he joined P V Narasimha Rao. He was the first major catch of the BJP as he knew inside out of the Congress and helped Atal-Advani team to nail the then ruling Congress. To a very large extent, it gave a party of Jai Shree Ram-chanting a degree of administrative gravitas it had toward the very end Vajpyee’s regime.
And the elite flow is unchecked. In Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma was a prize catch that not only brought the party to win in Assam, a first for a saffron flag to unfurl on the Brahmaputra bank. The Biswa Sarma effect has paralysed the Congress in the entire north eastern region. It was the Congress which won most seats in Manipur yet it failed to get the support of just three MLAs to form government. The BJP proved its skill once again in garnering support from six Congress MLAs who have joined the party. The resigning MLAs must resign from the assembly and say they are happy to seek reselection under the BJP. But their confidence is not an issue. Biswa Sarma is like a Simon Bolivar. He has announced that he’d soon grab the two states of Tripura and Meghalaya, one a surviving citadel of the CPI(M) and the other an old liege of the Congress when Purno Sangma was the liege lord. No one can tell what will happen in Tripura, but, those who have visited the state say northwester winds are blowing. It is very difficult to imagine the state’s ‘comrades’ not to wake up the roaring call of Amit Shah’s change.
Goa’s is a classic example where Congress lost power because the leadership was unable to decide within the first 12 hours of results as to who should be its chief ministerial candidate. Digvijay Singh is being flogged for all the wrong reasons.
The country is in a state of political stupor, with old ideas and action calls becoming thoroughly ineffective and the people have shown little interest in more of the old stuff. The old fear about the BJP, that its a party of too much polarization, is somehow getting sublimated in a new fusion of acceptance. Something that Gadkari said is the ‘genius’ of his party that turned Ratnakar, the dacoit into the poet of poets. He said in Pune when confronted how could his party go on admitting all & sundry including criminals of the Congress, SP, BSP into the BJP, “If criminals enter the party, we lessen their faults and increase their merits…In our party, criminals change for good, in the same way in which Valya, a robber, turned into Valmiki…” The hunt for talent has not ended. The new troika of Modi-Shah-RSS is on hunt of hidden talent across the country. The BJP have taken 180 degree turn.
But there is definitely a point about hardcore public life changing people’s behaviour, something that is hard to find in a like Congress with total control clamped on independent thinking.
