Battle for 2014 gets interesting!
For those political pundits and sundry observers of the national scene who were sanguine till a few months ago at the seemingly irreversible decline of the Congress and the growth of regional parties and a Narendra Modi-hyped Bharatiya Janata Party at the cost of the Grand Old Party, the events unfolding post the BJP’s national executive in Goa in June this year should be a wake-up call.
The BJP, till even a couple of months ago, seemed very much in the ascendency with Modi being talked up as India’s saviour by a section of the media and the party hoping to cash in on the anti-incumbency mood in the nation. A dual strategy of pushing the development agenda showcasing the “Gujarat model” and running a subterranean Hindutva campaign in the Hindi heartland states, the think-tank expected, would build traction over the next few months going into the general election. Then, the BJP patriarch LK Advani took his stand against the elevation of the Gujarat Chief Minister to the party’s prime ministerial candidate. Ever since June, when Advani skipped the BJP meet, the punch has definitely been going out of the Modi campaign though his utterances remain as sharp or vitriolic ~ depending on your point of view ~ as ever.
Now, Advani has once again attempted to bung a spanner in the works though the BJP president Rajnath Singh has made it clear he will go ahead anyway, with RSS backing, to anoint Modi overriding the objections of Advani, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and some other senior BJP leaders including Murli Manohar M Joshi. But the damage has been done. In the words of former BJP think-tank member Sudheendra Kulkarni, “Modi is a polarizing force not just in the country but has proven to be so within the party too.” Of course the BJP will purportedly come together once the expected Modi elevation is announced and pretend all is well, but that is patently not the case. With Modi leading them into the electoral battle for 2014, the BJP knows allies will be difficult to find and it will have to rest all its hopes on a “wave election” with Modi riding its crest.
The Congress has understood that and its recent rise from slumber complete with showcasing the Food Security Bill and the Land Acquisition Bill accompanied by a media blitzkrieg is showing signs of purchase. Its inherent sycophantic limitation of not being able to name anyone but a Nehru-Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate if a member of that family is willing has actually, in the current circumstances, become an asset. There is no unseemly fight for the top spot, even if by default, and party strategists have been clearly putting forth its Gujarat leaders or more articulate general secretaries to take on Modi in a bid to show that their man punches in a different league. If the Congress can somehow get the economy moving again it might limit the damage that is coming its way due to disgust with rampant corruption and a pretty strong anti-incumbency mood. But more crucially, it would certainly prevent any “Modi wave” coming to pass and that would put paid the Gujarat chief minister’s ambitions of ruling from New Delhi.
What is adding more masala to the mix, as it were, is that regional parties that all surveys and opinion polls over the past six months have consistently shown as doing rather well in the Lok Sabha poll are in some trouble too. The Samajwadi Party whose leader Mulayam Singh Yadav was openly exhorting the people of Uttar Pradesh to give his party 50 seats to help him achieve his long-nursed prime ministerial ambitions is in deep trouble in UP where there are clear signs of the Muslim community which has been its major support base for close to two decades now moving away in the wake of the Muzaffarnagar communal riots.
The Trinamul Congress in West Bengal, another major regional player which many expected could garner as many as 30 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, is in some trouble with the Calcutta High Court striking down its decision to pay salaries to maulvis and muezzins from the state exchequer as unconstitutional, to add to its governance woes. Nitish Kumar of the JD (U) and ruling in Bihar too was expected to do well but the breaking of his alliance with the BJP has given the old fox Lalu Prasad a second wind. Of the major regional players not aligned either to the Congress of the BJP, only Naveen Patnaik in Orissa and J Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu seem to be holding on to their preeminent positions.
So, come the General elections, all bets are off! Interesting times ahead…
