Modi government’s U-turns expose a well-known secret—BJP is facing a crisis of conviction

Article 370, Ram Mandir and UCC formed the core of the BJP’s politics. Now that these issues are no longer electorally productive, the BJP is struggling.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Parliament house | Praveen Jain, ThePrint

The Union Cabinet’s approval of the Unified Pension Scheme on Saturday drew varied reactions from the Opposition. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the U in UPS symbolises the Narendra Modi government’s U-turns, while Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh called it worse than the NPS.

The government’s spin doctors dismissed suggestions of a backtrack on pension reforms. Their argument was that, unlike the old pension scheme, the UPS is contributory funded. The fact that the UPS would put an additional burden on the exchequer was nothing to debate about, obviously. What’s, however, indisputable is that the government made a U-turn on the NPS to please employees ahead of the elections in four states this year – Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

The committee to review the pension system was set up in the wake of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly election. One of the factors that was said to have contributed to the loss was Congress’ promise to restore the old pension system.  Then, Congress-led governments in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan had implemented the OPS, which didn’t help it retain power in subsequent assembly elections. Now the BJP finds it safer to roll back on pension reforms to come up with the UPS, which guarantees assured pension, inflation indexation and lumpsum payment at superannuation of the NPS.

BJP’s many U-turns

The U-turn on NPS is not a first in Modi 3.0. Rahul Gandhi’s stamp was visible when the Centre backtracked on lateral entry into bureaucracy, as well as a series of measures taken by BJP-led governments.

These developments have led to jokes in political circles. That if you want the government to change a policy or adopt a new one, the best person to ensure that is Rahul Gandhi. The BJP’s allies may also claim credit for a few changes. Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan, and Janata Dal (United) leader KC Tyagi had lent their voices to Gandhi’s attack on the lateral entry policy.

It was because of the Telugu Desam Party’s support to the Opposition’s demand for a joint parliamentary committee on the Waqf Bill that the government had to agree to it.

Credit Gandhi or the BJP’s partners, the fact is that U-turns have characterised the 11 weeks since Modi took oath as the prime minister for a third time. Is it coalition compulsion or a knee-jerk reaction to the Opposition?

Even if the government were to steer the course without bothering about coalition partners, who would rock the boat? Not Nitish Kumar, because only the BJP can keep him in the CM’s chair (the only thing he cares about).

Not Chandrababu Naidu because he needs to deliver on his pre-poll promises and give his son, Lokesh, a solid platform as his successor before the Telugu Desam Party chief thinks of becoming a kingmaker in New Delhi. Not even Chirag Paswan, who has turned out to be a worthy successor to his late father Ram Vilas Paswan. Chirag has been riding on Modi’s popularity as his “Hanuman” in order to consolidate his base among the Dalits in Bihar. He is too pragmatic a politician to let one issue jeopardise his equations with his Ram, Narendra Modi. Other BJP partners in the NDA, say Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena or Anupriya Patel of the Apna Dal, will face an existential crisis if they think of walking out on the BJP.

Hypothetically, if the worst comes to worst, and some of these allies do reduce the government to a minority in the Lok Sabha, who would form the alternative government? The INDIA bloc might look rock solid in Parliament, but they are a divided lot outside. Look at how the Kolkata rape and murder case has exposed the chinks in this partnership, with Gandhi attacking the Mamata Banerjee-led government for her “attempt to save the accused”.

Gandhi, however, looked isolated in the INDIA bloc as other partners took a measured stance and refrained from questioning Banerjee. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, for instance, accused the BJP of “doing politics” in the case.

That Mamata is not a great fan of Rahul is hardly a secret. Non-Congress leaders in the INDIA bloc – from the SP, the AAP, and the TMC, among others– have been interacting frequently, keeping the Congress out. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee chose to attend the NITI Aayog meeting last month while CMs of other INDIA bloc-ruled states boycotted it.

Banerjee visited jailed Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s residence in Delhi to meet his wife, Sunita Kejriwal. Earlier she met Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai. Akhilesh Yadav was a special invitee at the TMC’s Martyrs’ Day rally in Kolkata last month. These deliberations are interesting, given how these regional parties have grown at the cost of the Congress.

They are united in anti-Modiism but whether they will remain so to prop up a Congress-led government and help in its revival remains a million-dollar question. So is the Congress’ readiness to accept Banerjee or any other non-Congress leader as the prime minister if the opportunity arises.

The BJP’s confusion

So, if there is no threat from the allies or the INDIA bloc at this stage, what explains the Modi government’s U-turns? The answer lies in the confusion around what hit the party in the last Lok Sabha election. The general narrative is that the 400-paar slogan cost the BJP as the Scheduled Castes/Tribes and Other Backward Classes grew suspicious of its intent about reservation. Not everybody is convinced, though.

PM Modi himself, as I am told by multiple BJP leaders, is still asking party colleagues what went wrong in the Lok Sabha polls. Nobody would talk about his popularity graph, obviously. But many have raised questions about the 400-paar narrative. If this slogan cost the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and a few other states, why did it not affect results in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and other places? In fact, the BJP swept Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Odisha, where the SCs/STs constitute around 40 per cent of the population.

The issue here is that the top BJP leadership is not ready to tackle pertinent questions. Why did the BJP karyakartas and volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) go cold in the elections? Who advised party president JP Nadda to declare that the BJP has become so competent today that it doesn’t need the RSS? What is the criterion for inducting outsiders—history sheeter Sunil Pandey of Bihar being the latest case—into the BJP? Who was responsible for giving tickets to “outsiders” and for what considerations? Who is accountable for the party’s internal survey agencies that gave misleading reports about winnable candidates? Who was responsible for the arbitrary distribution of party tickets?

A veteran BJP leader told me that, when he was a young party worker, he went to see Sundar Singh Bhandari, a powerful general secretary, without any appointment at 9, Ashoka Road, in New Delhi where he was staying.

“He had no househelp then. He asked me to sit and went inside. After a while, he came out, holding a tray with a cup of tea, biscuits and namkin. I was a young BJP worker but Bhandariji had so much affection and respect for karyakartas. Look at our leaders today,” the senior BJP leader told me, adding that today’s party leaders need to read Dattopant Thengadi’s ‘Karyakarta’.

He quoted a BJP reporter as saying that “even Sanjay Mayukh”, BJP’s national media co-in-charge, “has no qualms” disconnecting Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s online interaction with journalists. The former wanted to answer a question even after Mayukh asked him to wind up. “If this is what they do to ministers, think of how they treat ordinary karyakartas. This arrogance is creating a gulf between us and party workers,” said the veteran leader.

Crisis of conviction

Be that as it may, the U-turns in governance point to a bigger crisis in the BJP – the crisis of conviction. Two of the party’s three core agendas: construction of the Ayodhya Ram Temple and invalidation of Article 370, have been fulfilled.

The third, the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code, isn’t gaining much traction. The implementation of the first two didn’t pay any electoral dividends either. These three issues formed the core of the BJP’s politics. Now that these issues are no longer electorally productive, the BJP is struggling. With the Modi wave waning, the party looks all the more confused. That’s what these U-turns in governance reflect. As a BJP leader told me: “Rahul Gandhi reminds you of John Bunyan: He that is down needs fear no fall.”

He can talk about caste census, Adanis, Ambanis and whatnot. He has nothing to lose. Modi government’s U-turns seem to follow the next line: “He that is low no pride”. It’s undermining Brand Modi as strong and decisive, which is the BJP’s only USP today.

DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)