By Swapan Dasgupta
There is something quite compelling about the
what-if, counterfactual history that fascinates people. Would the bloody World
War of 1914-18 have been averted if the chauffer of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
not taken a wrong turn in the town of Sarajevo? Would Partition of India have
been averted had the Congress leadership known that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was
suffering from a deadly cancer and was living on borrowed time?
These are interesting subjects for intellectual
mind-games on a winter’s evening in the hills. However, there is no percentage
in the BJP lamentation that victory in three more seats in Delhi last Sunday
would have made the party’s forward march appear even more emphatic. Equally,
there is little credibility in the assertion made by beleaguered secular
crusaders from Barkha Dutt to Nitish Kumar that Narendra Modi’s contribution to
the BJP victory was zero because the party’s vote fell in Delhi. To the
uninitiated observer, the overall winner of this round of elections was the
BJP. And since Modi is the national face of the BJP, he has to count as an
overall winner too, just as his political standing would have been affected had
the Congress won any of the four states. The exemption clause that insulates
the ‘dynasty’ from any responsibility for adversity and catapults it to the top
of the credit-seekers’ queue in the event of a triumph does not, mercifully,
apply to individuals with lesser pedigrees.
Fortunately, there is more to the just-concluded
round of elections than the conflicting theories on the likely impact of Modi. What
stares everyone in the face most starkly is the inescapable conclusion that a
Congress-led UPA Government is very unlikely to be returned to power next year.
Admittedly, Sonia Gandhi has taken heed of the
disappointing results and promised yet another bout of the mandatory
‘introspection’; and Rahul Gandhi has promised to attend to the structural
shortcomings of the Congress with exceptional purposefulness. There has also
been an announcement that the Congress will go into the 2014 general election
with a pre-determined prime ministerial candidate. Yet, none of these grand
proclamations can take away from the fact that the average Congress activist
and leader is approaching the 2014 Lok Sabha poll dejected and dispirited. During
confessional, the party may be coerced into admitting that it is fighting the
Lok Sabha poll not to win, but to prevent a Modi-led BJP from winning.
In the coming days, we are likely to witness even
more dirt being hurled at Modi by sting operations that bear the sponsorship
mark of the Congress. We may even witness a last-ditch attempt by fanatical
ultra-loyalists to dethrone the Prime Minister and replace him with a member of
the first family. If the desperation to cling on to power proves too
irresistible, the country could even witness some pretty adventurist schemes to
trigger social polarisation that could be sought to be blamed on Modi or his
associates.
The possibilities are endless but it is unlikely
that they will produce the mythical “late, reverse swing” that fanciful
Congressmen detected in Rajasthan and courtier-journalists gleamed in Madhya
Pradesh. Actually, the experience of Madhya Pradesh is worth narrating, not
least because an unnatural sense of deference by the media has prevented many
uncomfortable facts from emerging. For two months it was propagated that the
quasi-official anointment of Jyotiraditya Scindia as the Congress’ chief
ministerial choice had made the race tighter. Scindia, it was suggested, would
really make Shivraj Singh Chauhan sweat.
The results suggest that far from boosting the
Congress’ tally against a 10-year-old government, Scindia’s leadership, the
number of seats won by the party actually fell by 13. To be fair, this failure
can’t be pinned on Scindia alone. However, it suggests that even a supposedly
more energetic leader on his own can’t reverse a larger trend. Regardless of
whether the Congress goes into battle with Rahul Gandhi or P.Chidambaram or
even (as some suggest) a technocrat such as Nandan Nilekani at the helm, the
party has to bear the full weight of the anti-Congress wave sweeping through
much of India.
This has implications for the likes of Nitish Kumar
who believed that an understanding with the Congress would boost his prospects.
As things stand at present, the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar must be wondering
whether any identification with the Congress will involve inheriting a negative
sentiment. Sharad Pawar expressed this quite openly after the results and the
same thoughts must be going through the minds of the DMK leadership in Tamil
Nadu. The Aaam Aadmi Party and its charismatic leader Arvind Kejriwal may be
projected as the emerging third alternative by a section of the editorial class
anxious to clutch on to any anti-Modi straw. But AAP’s ability to strike roots
outside Delhi is doubtful and will be limited to linkages with the so-called
‘people’s movements’ against development projects in some states. In any case,
it is still too early for AAP to dilute the purity of its mission by teaming up
with either the established Left or with potential constituents of the mythical
Third Front.
The outcome of the four Assembly elections,
particularly the despondency in the Congress, has given the BJP its best
opportunity for attracting new allies in at least Haryana, Jharkhand and
Karnataka. Despite the opposition to each of these measures from within, it
would be imprudent for the BJP to bask in majestic isolation and delay matters
too much.
Last Sunday, the BJP took a few more steps in the
direction of its goal of winning power in Delhi. A few more smart moves aimed
at seizing the moment will see them tantalizingly close to their final
objective. But, as the Delhi results revealed, to be within smelling distance
of victory isn’t the same as winning.
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