Mamata Banerjee’s election strategist, Prashant Kishor, has listed the BJP’s three plus points. The first is Narendra Modi’s image – he is a god to some people, Kishor said, – the second is Hindu-Muslim polarization and the third is the prevailing anti-incumbency sentiment against the ruling Trinamool Congress.
While the BJP’s opponents do not seem to have evolved any tactics to battle the public perception about the prime minister’s larger-than-life image – relentless mocking can be an option – or counter the communalization of politics except by spreading the message of social harmony with greater vigour, a great deal can be done with regard to the anti-incumbency factor.
It is the failure of the secularists on this front which enabled the BJP to gain ground in the first place. There is little doubt that the virtual collapse of the Manmohan Singh government in the last two years of its reign helped the BJP to enter the corridors of power in a big way.
To make matters worse, Manmohan Singh’s perceived weakness as the prime minister vis-a-vis Congress president Sonia Gandhi, which apparently led to the policy paralysis in the government, played a crucial part in the BJP’s projection of Modi as a strong man and an able administrator.
But for these two factors, the history of the post-2014 period would have been different. Considering how the Congress won the Delhi assembly elections in 2008 even as the Pakistani terrorists were in Mumbai, the mistake of taking the foot off the accelerator of reforms after 2011-12, as P. Chidambaram said, is obvious.
In Mamata Banerjee’s case today, there has been the added mistake of letting the Trinamool Congress cadres run amok with their “cut money” extortions from property owners. If the chief minister had reined in these goons, she wouldn’t have had to face the BJP’s allegations about running a syndicate.
There are lessons to be drawn from these lapses. As the BJP’s main challenger at the national level, the Congress will have to be particularly mindful of what needs to be done and what is to be avoided. As it is, the party has an unenviable reputation of being prone to corruption. In addition to policy paralysis, this was one of the charges which eroded the ground from under the Manmohan Singh government’s feet.
The Grand Old Party’s offshoots, too, have seemingly inherited this penchant for graft from the mother organization. As the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) travails in Maharashtra show, the party may well be living up to its name of a “naturally corrupt party”, as Modi once called it.
Since corruption corrodes a party’s moral fibre, it is not surprising that Congressmen in various states – Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura – have succumbed so easily to the machinations of those who are in the business of buying and selling political loyalty. “Bikauhai” (purchasable), as Anna Hazare said about footloose politicians when he was battling the Congress.
For all of the BJP’s financial and organizational clout, the party is not invincible. Its “god” cannot always save it. As its recent loss of power in Delhi, Maharashtra and Jharkhand and the setback in Haryana show, it is vulnerable to those who can provide a counter narrative. A key feature of this narrative is good governance. But, after the disappointment in Maharashtra, there are not many in the non-BJP camp who can claim to be a front-runner in this respect.
However, there are exceptions. Punjab’s Amarinder Singh and Chhattisgarh’s Bhupesh Baghel of the Congress can claim this distinction as can the Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi. It is obviously to subdue the latter that the BJP’s government at the centre passed a law to increase the powers of Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor. Perhaps Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren can be a part of this list. But there is none at the national level.
Unless the national opposition can find a leader who can arouse trust, the BJP will remain ahead in the race where Lutyens Delhi is concerned even if some of the regional parties are offering it a stiff challenge as in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. As the BJP’s setbacks in Maharashtra and elsewhere show, the hour may have come for the opposition to unite, as Mamata Banerjee wants, but where is the man ?
For all the backing which Rahul Gandhi is getting from his party, he remains something of a non-starter with a ”nervous, unformed quality”, as Barack Obama said of him. Besides, he doesn’t have any governing experience. It is understandable, therefore, why the Congress is playing second fiddle in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu.
It has been said that if Mamata Banerjee can pull it off in West Bengal, she can play a pivotal role. But the need of the hour is for a person from a national party, not a regional outfit.
