BJP’s Gujarat campaign is a nervous paradox of a double-incumbent fighting like an underdog, making the Gandhi dynasty and not its own performance the issue.
The “trending” questions these days are: have you been to Gujarat? What’s your feeling from the ground? What do you sniff in the air? Is there going to be a change?
The first is a simple one for me to answer: no, I haven’t been to Gujarat in this campaign, at least not yet. And I do not have the olfactory powers to sniff change in the campaign air. I love dogs, but I am not one.
What I can do, however, is read political actions, responses, faces, utterances, shifting tactics and strategies, goal-posts, vocabulary and grammar of a campaign, and changed rules. Those tell me whether or not there is change in the air of Gujarat, and irrespective of what the result is on 18 December, the BJP is caught in a state of nervousness not seen since 2014.
They are worried about Gujarat, they are surprised by the new commitment Rahul Gandhi has shown, and the traction he is getting. They acknowledge the anger on the ground, particularly among the young. They rue the “messing up” of their own key caste equations, especially with the Patels. They even complain about the ineffectiveness of the local leadership. We haven’t seen this mood in any election since the winter of 2013, when the party swept Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.
Nobody in the BJP even vaguely suggests or accepts they could lose. But the assertion they make most emphatically is a kind of negative self-assurance: oh, we simply can’t afford to lose Gujarat. Do you think Modiji and Amitbhai will let such a calamity (“vipada”) come to pass? See how Narendrabhai is campaigning. And even if there is anger among voters and a 22-year anti-incumbency, do you really think the Congress party has the wherewithal to bring the voters out? Amitbhai will beat them in the battle of the booth. Look at the machinery he has built.
All of it is said with great confidence. On careful reading and hearing though, you could conclude it is all said to build self-assurance. To convince yourself, rather than an outsider who might have doubts. This desperate search for conviction is nervousness.
There is one big difference between the Gujarat campaign and any other that the BJP has fought under the Modi-Shah reign. It’s the only one they are fighting not as underdogs, but as front-runners and incumbents. In all others (barring Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in 2013) they were challenging incumbents. I am leaving out Punjab and Goa because BJP was the junior partner in one and the second is much too small.
In Gujarat, on the other hand, BJP carries the baggage—or fuel, depending on how you look at it—of double-incumbency. Not only does it rule both the state and the Centre, the same two leaders rule both for their party: Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. BJP leaders may argue that this is today’s reality, that each BJP state is controlled as closely by this new high command as Gujarat. But it isn’t the whole truth. Both the prime minister and his party chief come from Gujarat, impressed the entire country’s voters with their two-and-a-half-term Gujarat performance as the highlight on their CVs, and administered the state firmly, as if it was under President’s Rule.
It obviously did not work as well as they might have thought. Within three years, despite being under the high command’s direct control, the state has lost its way. It has already had two chief ministers, both unpopular and ineffectual, the second worse than the first. The state’s booming economy, fired by both mercantile and manufacturing activity, has stalled. Young people are understandably restless.
Contrary to the stereotypes that have grown over the decades, young Gujaratis have never been politically docile or unquestioning. In the pre-Emergency era, the Navnirman movement found its feet here. Later, in 1985, as the fairly recently submitted Mandal Commission report became contentious, the first protests came from Gujarat—that story was also my first tour of duty in the state, and as it usually happened with all unrest in Gujarat, caste riots soon took a communal turn.
We err in seeing only the Hindi heartland as politically volatile, probably because Gujarat has seen two long epochs of stability under strong leaders: Chimanbhai Patel and Narendra Modi. The rise of young caste-group leaders—Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor—is a sequel to the film we have seen in the past in Gujarat politics.
They have moved into the power vacuum that Modi and Shah’s move to Delhi created. Two generations of Gujaratis had lived under two strong leaders, and prospered. They liked the arrangement and miss it. In Modi, they had a chief minister the party high command called before any decision—even stalwart L.K. Advani depended on him for his Lok Sabha seat.
They are no longer used to having a chief minister who calls Delhi for every decision. In any case, this was always the Congress model, never the BJP’s. This shifting of the party’s centre of gravity has messed it up in the state. No surprise that it is divided, with groups and rivalries. And no surprise, therefore, that there is nervousness.
In 2014, the promise and slogan that swept Narendra Modi to power was his ‘Gujarat Model’. His era in power was marked with unprecedented industrial, agricultural and infrastructure growth. There was also considerable administrative reform and innovation, particularly in the areas of power and irrigation. He found great adulation and endorsement from businessmen, and after five wasted years of the crisis-ridden UPA, the country voted for him, suspending the memory of the 2002 riots and accepting the new branding of Modi as ‘Vikas Purush’ (man of development) rather than the epithet his opponents used for him, ‘Vinash Purush’ (man of destruction).
If one thing has disappeared from his and the BJP’s campaign in Gujarat over the past two weeks, it is ‘vikas’. The ‘Gujarat Model’ brought him power nobody has had in three decades, but it is not the key point of his Gujarat campaign agenda. It is Rahul Gandhi and his slip-ups, identity, Aurangzeb, Khilji, Nehru-and-Somnath Temple, which register did Rahul sign, what is Kapil Sibal saying on Babri/Ayodhya in the Supreme Court. Mysterious old Pakistani generals are surfacing on commando-comic channels “endorsing” the Congress party and Ahmed Patel as chief minister. It is back to identity (mine and my rivals’), anti-minorityism, the Gandhi dynasty. It is almost like a return to 2002, bar the invocation of “Mian Musharraf”.
This is a change. In our electoral politics, the key differential in campaigns and approach to voters is incumbency, for or against. It is a rare occasion when a formidable double incumbent (22 years in the state and now with a full majority at the Centre) is fighting as if it were an underdog and the Congress the incumbent. We understand that while the Congress has been losing in Gujarat for almost three decades now, it has always had about 40 per cent committed vote in a bipolar state. It is, therefore, always a power. Now go back to the campaign reports and videos of the earlier campaigns, especially 2007, ’12 and ’14. The thrust shifted from the adversaries to Modi’s own achievements as his power grew and consolidated after repeat victories.
A combination of economic missteps, poor local leadership and failed remote-controlled governance have created this muddle for the BJP in a state they should have won en passant or, in the more familiar, chalte chalte. Now, it is a hard, nervous climb. To that extent, whatever the result on 18 December, Rahul has succeeded. He’s taken the battle to the rival’s territory, and forced him to take him more seriously than he has done so far, or would have wished to. A party as dominating and powerful as the BJP today is spending all its time attacking the leader of one with just 46 seats in the Lok Sabha, and in the woods in Gujarat for 22 years.
This isn’t the script the BJP had written. This is the reason they are furious, and nervous.
The issue is certainly the handling of the economy at the national level. With due respect, Mr. Arun Jaitley’s 4 budgets have been largely under-whelming and simply do not have any bold or out of the box ideas. He simply does not know what his officers are doing at the ground level and how they are harrasing the officers. He has missed all opportunities to lower taxes and give boost to small and large business. He has simply continued to raise taxes. Sorry to say, he has been very disappointing for those who had appreciated his performance as Law minister and Commerce minister in the earlier NDA regime. Regardless of the outcome, Modiji would do well and replace Shri Arunji as the Finance minister with the energetic Piyush Goyal.
Too much of Congress narrative in the article not from the front.
The so called development in Gujarat was always been there so the flip-flops of Modi. It is these elitist journalists changing their views according to situation out of fear or lures.
Companies built on products. So political parties are based on set of ideas. Obviously each product reaches its end of life. Great companies invest and introduce better product by cannibalise their own earlier product and retaining leadership e.g. Gillette. Great parties do the same reinvent themselves before they become obsolete. Modi and Amit are such smart politicians , they won’t go down without fight and Rahul is great opponent.
If great care is not taken, the campaign during the general election will be very similar to this one.
We are missing Shri Shekhar Gupta’s vignettes from the campaign trail, what the ads on walls are telling him about the stage of the state’s development.
Modi needs to examine just two big ousters – Winston Churchill (1945) and Indira Gandhi (1977) – to understand that democracy has a way of making redundant strong leaders who push rhetoric to the limit. He is a leader who wants us to believe that as CM, he managed Gujarat like a competent CEO. However, when promoted, he failed to carry out a fundamental responsibility of handing over governance in capable hands.
Excellent analysis.Kudos!
What a self serving write up? RaGa is spinning stories on machines that will turn Potatoes to Gold. Mm. Shekar Gupta still wants his readers to “read” the changes of Rahul’s leadership qualities.
Rome rajya will trump Ram rajya. that’s for sure.
It is true that the nervousness in the BJP is all so palpable. However, I give no credit to Congress and their soon-to-be President for this. The Congress is where it has been in Gujarat – the same force that is has been all these years. That force has not ebbed and it certainly does not seem to have grown on it’s own. What gives the Congress the veneer of increased strength are the BJP’s mis-steps of Demo and GST. Laudable they are as much needed reforms, the ham-handed implementation of these measures has certainly left most ordinary Indians irritated. More so, in a state like Gujarat with it’s pre-dominant business class, these are bound to create serious backlash. The results of the election can go either ways and it should surprise no one. But instead of finding reasons elsewhere, BJP should evaluate how it ceded ground to the opposing voices.. One cannot sit on a perch and take ordinary citizens for granted and have no promised outcomes to show for the reforms that were undertaken. It is no one’s case that reforms should not be undertaken but they should have been well laid out and implemented in a non-disruptive manner. Hope the BJP learns the lessons from the Gujarat experience (irrespective of whether it wins or loses) and starts conducting it’s affairs with a little bit more humility and participation from the people of India.
The author admits development in Gujarat. Mere fight being taken against Congress, rather it’s Rahul Gandhi, only shows intention of BJP I not just winning this election. It wants decimation of the party with 46 to zero to start from Gujarat as it started 22 years against Congress and 12 years for Prime Minister Modiji.
Would appear seasoned Shear Gupta is trying to twist are intentionally twisting the understanding as is his wount to be behind the sinking ship
On 18th December, as usal, most media persons would be surprise with result. BJP would retain its 2012 performance or may increase little.
I am from Gujarat and can tell you Hardik has very limited effect, mainly in few areas. Rahul as usual gets good media couvrage but can’t convert it into vote.
50% Gujarati voters (who are below 45 years old have either not seent Congress rule in State or very little memory of it. For them , Congress means UPA2 – one of the worst governments in Indian independent history. For those,who are above 45 years, can easily find difference between Pre – Modi era and post-Modi era. In both cases, majority will vote for BJP.
In 2012, as per media, Patidar / Patel were against Modi under Keshubhai’s leadership. There rally at that time had larger people thant what Hardik’s rally have today. Media predicated clsoe fight but at end, BJP won with almost 2/3 majority. Even in 2007, media created same hype that Patidar are against BJP, many big Patidar leader campaigned against BJP but result was 2/3majority to BJP.
I am not BJP member but can get sense of ground. Also don’t want state to suffer like Delhi or Bihar which suffered lot after new experiment.
you ARE a bjp supporter hahahahah
Shekhar, we always loved you… For being finest journalist reporting from front like operation Blue Star or your musings with Vajpeyi ji… Or your National Interest columns… We followed you all the way everywhere.. From TV to print… Keep it up..!!