These are exciting days for the Bharatiya Janata Party-baiters. They believe the BJP is ‘peaking out’ — in assembly elections, to begin with.
BJP strategists are dismissive. Politics, they say, is not mountaineering in which one scales the peak and then climbs down. Their role model is Sergey Bubka, the Ukrainian pole vaulter. “Bubka kept improving on his own records. He broke the world record 35 times. We can do the same,” a key BJP strategist told this author Friday.
BJP detractors would find these words incredible, especially in these times, when the party is supposed to be on the back foot.
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BJP and its adversaries have contrasting worldviews
As it is, there are two absolutely contrasting worldviews. BJP detractors see the recent assembly election results — in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand — as people giving a thumbs-down to Narendra Modi government’s economic policies and showing a yearning for a non-BJP alternative. BJP leaders are disappointed about losing power in the states but are fine with the results in which they see a silver lining — an increase in the party’s vote shares.
“We need to cross 40 per cent (of the total vote share) and then this ganging up (of opposition parties) will be of no consequence (in the first-past-the-post system),” the BJP strategist said in a definitive, self-assured tone.
The ruling party is conscious that it has become the Congress of yesteryear, when all political parties — whether regional or national, political ally or ideological adversary (and vice-versa) — would treat it as a threat to their survival. That’s why the BJP has set a target of crossing 40 per cent vote share.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP secured 37.76 per cent of the valid votes polled, up by more than six percentage points over its 2014 vote share. In 2019, the BJP secured over 50 per cent or more of the vote shares in 16 states and union territories but it was then part of the NDA.
When the next Lok Sabha election happens in 2024, the opposition parties that could stitch up only state-specific alliances in 2019 may be more organised and the BJP’s current allies may also feel compelled to come out of the saffron party’s shadow for their survival.
With the ‘Modi magic’ still working, the party may hope to get to the targeted vote share in 2024 but the same can’t be said about its prospects in states. There are reasons for it but we will come to that later.
The second development that has energised BJP detractors is the largely spontaneous protests, especially by students, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC). The ruling party is equally energised. BJP leaders “trust” the Left liberals, headline-hunting activists and, of course, Rahul Gandhi to turn the CAA-NPR-NRC debate into a Hindu-Muslim issue. The BJP wanted the NRC bogey to pay electoral dividends in Assam and West Bengal but the party now sees an even bigger potential in it.
Two-child norm, BJP’s next bouncer to opposition
Opposition leaders believe they have cornered the BJP on the NRIC and they are thrilled. Little do they realise that the ruling party is preparing to throw them off balance with another bouncer — a two-child norm to stabilise India’s population. Four months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern about population explosion, the Niti Aayog is holding consultations to draft a policy on this. Expect a massive polarising debate on this issue in the run-up to West Bengal assembly election in 2021. The Congress is already split on this issue.
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Modi-Shah’s failures in states
It’s not, therefore, not the opposition parties that should bother the BJP much. The ruling party should be concerned about its challenges from within, which would keep it from attaining the 40 per cent plus vote shares in state elections. The main challenge is the failure of PM Modi and BJP president Amit Shah in promoting state leaders with mass base. They sought to impose leaders from the top — Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana, and Raghubar Das in Jharkhand — but they have proved to be failures.
Of the 13 chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of the BJP today, not one inspires confidence. Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, for instance, is said to be a prime ministerial aspirant but doesn’t have any following beyond Gorakhpur. The less said the better about his administrative acumen. His Uttarakhand counterpart, Trivendra Singh Rawat, another experiment by Modi and Shah, has been a disaster, too. And the only reason Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani may be continuing in the chair is that it doesn’t matter who occupies it in Modi’s home state.
Except B.S. Yediyurappa in Karnataka and Pema Khandu in Arunachal Pradesh, none of the BJP chief ministers today have any mass base. Khandu is an import from the Congress while Yediyurappa is the BJP’s compulsion, not a choice. The BJP high command has consistently sought to undermine leaders who are popular in their own right — Yediyurappa, Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh, Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, and Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, to name a few.
In Rajasthan, Raje might have lost the last assembly election, but she is the only BJP leader with mass appeal. She had got a clear majority for the BJP in 2003 in Rajasthan, a first for the party that couldn’t achieve this feat even under Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. She lost in 2008 but led the party’s return with a bigger majority in 2013. The BJP high command somehow never took a liking for her and promoted her rivals — Om Birla as Lok Sabha Speaker and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as a union cabinet minister.
On Friday, first-term MLA Satish Poonia, who has lost several elections in the past, became the first Jat leader to be appointed Rajasthan BJP president. There was a clear message for Raje in that appointment — the BJP high command doesn’t see any role for her in Rajasthan affairs.
There have been similar messages to party stalwarts in other states, too. Kailash Vijayvargiya, Shivraj Chouhan’s rival in Madhya Pradesh, has emerged as a very powerful leader, thanks to his proximity to Amit Shah, but he is no match to Chouhan in terms of mass appeal.
The BJP is in a mess in most states and it is increasingly looking worse as Modi-Shah’s experiments in giving new leaders to the party have failed.
For the average citizen, the state government is a lot more relevant and important than the central government in Delhi. So if almost all of the ruling party’s CMs are proving to be duds, that should be cause for worry and concern for its continued electoral success. Dismal governance, as in Uttar Pradesh, will melt the party’s brand.