SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Sujay Gupta
On Thursday morning as Shripad Naik lay on his bed at the Goa Medical College Hospital after a series of surgeries performed by the Dean of GMC and a renowned orthopaedic surgeon Dr Shivanand Bandekar, his sons stood by his bedside to break a tragic news which wasn’t conveyed to him till then, as he and his doctors fought hard to pull him out of a life-threatening situation, post his tragic accident in North Karnataka.
His sons informed of his wife’s passing in the same accident, where the door on the side she was sitting broke open flinging her into the deep ditch where the car fell after its driver attempted to overtake the escort vehicle of the Karnataka government provided to Naik as a union minister, lost control and turned turtle as it hurtled towards a deep ditch.
On hearing the news of the passing away of not just his life partner but the source of his personal and well as political strength, his wife Vijaya, his first words were “It was God’s wish”.
This is stoicism and the ability to accept disappointments, tragedies and challenges. His demeanour and his nature have been the hallmarks of his political career pitch-forking him to the highest ranks of the party and cadre.
In spite of he being a central minister and/or MP across this stretch, his much-coveted desire to be Goa’s Chief Minister has eluded him, circumstances playing a key role in the BJP’s tallest leader in Goa today, not in-charge of the State where his following across caste lines will be etched in the politics of this land.
Goa is relieved that Bhau has emerged out of what could have been a calamity for the party and organisation (besides his close family and a legion of well-wishers). At the same time Goa grieves with him at the loss of his wife.
Party old-timers unequivocally state that notwithstanding the strange combination of the BJP legislature party, infused with defections and cross-overs, the preparation for 2024 has to be handled by the organisation, still controlled by those who have moved from the RSS.
For years Bhau has been ticking all the right boxes, but the sheer presence of Manohar Parrikar who joined the party after him and his control over the legislative side of the party and the State made Naik’s political footprint less etched on Goa’s electoral sands.
On one hand, he wasn’t quite the first choice, though most often the second to lead the party in an election. On the other, he has been the steadfast choice of giving the party the North Goa seat for five terms and the pride of a Goan minister in the Union cabinet whenever the BJP has been in power since 2001. Not many, even in Goa perhaps realise that Naik first became a Union minister 19 years ago and still continues to be one, having served in more ministries than most MPs in India ranging from Agriculture, Shipping, Culture, Tourism, Finance, Civil Aviation, Ayurveda and Defence.
This context is important for the present because the near-fatal accident of Naik, with Goa not yet having recovered from Manohar Parrikar’s demise has reminded many, who are not closely associated with the organisation, that Naik perhaps remains the only bridge the party has, between the BJP of Manohar Parrikar and the current BJP lead by Dr Pramod Sawant, battling with its pulls and pressures, with individual constituency satraps functioning as mini CMs.
The governance of the BJP government is a fragmented path-work of the political needs of each of its MLAs and ministers. It is a party which wants to come to power. That is the DNA of the Modi-Shah party.
Therefore the winner takes all plan of action needs the Ranes, the Godinhos and the Kavlekars and the merry band of turncoats with fragments of the “original” BJP represented by Michael Lobo, Nilesh Cabral, Glen Ticlo and Milind Naik, apart from Pramod Sawant himself. But this roll call enough is reason to understand that the party would be well-advised not to discard its age-old leitmotif – to build the organisation and the cadre.
If this has to be told bluntly, so be it. The sidelining of leaders like Laxmikant Parsekar, Rajendra Arlekar, who were asked to serve in the organisation by the RSS and absence of Shripad Naik in State politics has skewed the critical balance needed to give the party not just power, but a cadre based organisational strength, which ensured that the core identity and beliefs of the party did not suffer.
This isn’t quite spoken or written about because the mainstream English media discourse finds it easier to adapt and interpret a free talking, tweeting and commenting Congress clutching at straws to resurrect its political ship. The BJP’s issue is deeper. Its political ship may well sail with path-work, compromises and political arrangements. Its bigger worry should be that if this is the professed way forward then the bedrock on which the BJP has grown in Goa will get eroded with long term manifestations. That is why it needs Shripad Naik in a state role. He is too steeped in the organisation going way back to 1989 when he was the RSS ‘sangchalak’ from Tiswadi with a certain Manohar Parrikar, his counterpart from Bardez. Naik then went on to become BJP party president while Parrikar was the general secretary. This was in 1991 when both Naik and Parrikar were the face of change in the BJP, replacing seniors like Vishwanath Arlekar, Jiva Bhandare, Vasant Sabnis, Asha tai Salkar and Kashinath Parab.
But Bhau never became Chief Minister and Bhai never became BJP state president, a fact that outlined their roles.
Naik was well on his way to acquiring a top political role in the State, emerging also as the next big OBC leader when he uprooted Ravi Naik and won the Madkaim assembly seat in 1994. However, in 1999, it was Sudin Dhavlikar who turned the tables against him. Though Shripad Naik won the subsequent Lok Sabha elections held four months later, the loss was a turning point in Naik’s relationship with Manohar Parrikar.
There were many who nursed a grouse that their leader Naik may have been done in by the machinations of Parrikar who wanted to nip Naik’s electoral graph in Goa from rising. While this is unspoken and often dismissed, old-timers who have your confidence will not deny this in private conversations.
Though Bhau and Bhai were presented as the twin strengths of the BJP, which they were in their own rights, they were not confidants.
Even after Parrikar’s passing, the BJP high command had picked Shripad Naik as the next CM and sent union minister and Goa in-charge Nitin Gadkari to Goa with that message. But the BJP MLAs including Congress turncoats, wanted the CM to be within the ranks of MLAs. Gadkari had to call Amit Shah to inform him that the MLAs had, in a rare instance, actually refused the centre’s choice of Chief Minister and Shah, realising the political compulsions, agreed.
Today Bhau is out of danger though according to people in the know of his progress, he will take about three months to move about and resume a normal life. But as Goa waits for him to recover, the BJP in Goa must also get a political wake-up call that electoral successes through the route of political adjustments and getting the constituency arithmetic right, will succumb to the law of diminishing returns. To rebuild the organisation, they need to turn to the soft-spoken, humble man who lies in GMC with broken bones grieving the loss of his wife.
His stoicism in the face of great pain and loss hardly covers what he feels, at his current personal loss. But this stoicism also does not cover the deficit he knows his beloved party will be in if its organisation base is ill at ease.
