If Missed Calls Could Change India!

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is that time of the year when convivial dinner table conversations invariably veer towards politics and the general election. At such an occasion around Christmas, I overheard an erudite gentleman tell the junior diplomat of a European Union country that “if Narendra Modi comes to power I will flee the country.” 

The melodramatic proclamation left me cold. I had heard like-minded, self-proclaimed liberals say similar things in 1997 when the likelihood of a BJP-led government became a real possibility. No matter that Atal Behari Vajpayee was regarded as the sole enlightened voice in a party of cretins and fanatics, when it comes to impending political change there is always a great deal of nervous over-reaction.

Last week I went to a similar dinner where the guests were a familiar mix of the literary and the media. Once again, politics entered the conversation but this time there were no hyperbolic assertions and inquiries about one-way tickets out of India. On the contrary, the members of India’s “creative” community were visibly relaxed. The consensus was that the momentum had gone out of the Modi campaign and that The Economist’s dire warning had worked. Just as Hurricane Katrina had blown away the Republican challenge to the Obama presidency in 2012, the feeling was that a flood of missed calls had choked the Modi campaign. “Just wait and see”, the resident pundit with a taste for socialism and the good life told me, “Aam Aadmi Party will win 80 Lok Sabha seats.”  Modi, I was told in no uncertain terms, has “lost the plot”.

I am no prophet and it is indeed possible that the Indian electorate will use its vote to register a protest, putting aside the more daunting task of electing a government that is empowered to perform. Whatever the ultimate decision, there is no question that the first fortnight of 2014 has been intensely educative for all.

First, we have seen the conventional wisdom surrounding political mobilisation or, indeed, insurrectionary politics, being turned on its head. Contrary to the belief that motivating people to engage with civic and national life involved a long and even thankless slog, we have now been informed that governance and participation is all a matter of a missed call. A missed call, the innovators would like us to believe, can change India and propel the forces of goodness. I would strongly suggest that no citizen of India loses this opportunity. It is even better than clicking the ‘Like’ button on Facebook.

Secondly, an otherwise sceptical media that hitherto made ritual genuflections at the altar of neutrality have suddenly decided that this is no time to be mere observers and reporters. The Indian variants of Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Rothermere and Rupert Murdoch—each one blessed with a Citizen Kane-like belief in their power to make or break governments—have decided to throw in their lot with the Missed Call Party (MCP). The media has chosen to be a force multiplier for the MCP. The consequences have been absolutely bizarre. National news and even local news have been subsumed by the city news of Delhi.

Thirdly, the past month has seen the very same people who served as social, cultural and intellectual props of the Congress Party and the UPA Government shift their preference to the MCP. Nandan Nilekani may be the solitary aberration but it would seem that the tribe of individuals who were rewarded with committee memberships, research grants by ministries and umpteen business class tickets for seminars in the Occident, have realised that dynastic politics does not have the capacity to ensure the perpetuation of their perquisites after the summer of 2014. After the December 8, 2013 results of the Assembly elections, they may even have fearfully concluded that their Establishment would be replaced by a Counter-Establishment comprising those committed to rapid growth and Indian resurgence—a far cry from the lachrymose advocacy of the National Advisory Council agenda. Today, in the exhilarating buzz around the MCP, they have sensed an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: to stop Modi reaching Delhi and to remain relevant during the ensuing chaos.

Finally, the dramatic energy boost of the MCP has come as a godsend to at least one powerful country that is fearful of a Modi-led government. The reasons for this fear are complex. There is of course the burden of the strategic miscalculation that led to a US Administration peremptorily announcing the revocation of Modi’s US visa. But there is a far more complex reason. India’s “potential” to be a global economic power and be a factor in the strategic calculus of Asia has long been recognised. At the same time, India’s inability to live up to expectations for the past decade has been greeted with smug satisfaction. In Modi the big powers anticipated the possibility of the Indian elephant rising from its slumber. It would have meant recalibrating international relations—a bothersome and hazardous exercise. However, an India gripped by political turbulence and preoccupied with navel gazing, symbolism and missed calls would end all uncertainty. India would happily re-establish its pious irrelevance.

There are many smiling faces in the Capital these days. For the old sinners, the missed calls symbolise the counter revolution; for India, missed calls could be the harbinger of missed opportunities. The choice is ours. 

Sunday Pioneer, January 12, 2014

Time to send out friend requests

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. 

Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, December 13, 2013

BJP has the highest stake in these polls

By Swapan Dasgupta

By next Sunday afternoon the country will begin the process of digesting the results of the Assembly elections in five states. Although the results will include the verdict of Mizoram, the greatest attention will be on the four states of northern and central India where the principal battle is between the Congress and the BJP. Since the Congress holds power in Rajasthan and Delhi, and the BJP rules Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, this is not an unequal battle. Despite the fact that there are differences in how people vote in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections—this is particularly marked in Delhi—the outcome will be a curtain raiser in the battle to decide which party/alliance will rule at the Centre in 2014.

The issue is more than a question of the final tally. The interpretation of the final results is more than a statistical issue: it is a matter of perception and expectation. The stakes are unquestionably the highest for the BJP. As the challenger whose geographical spread does not extend to large parts of southern and eastern India, the BJP has to demonstrate that it is in a position to maximise its yield in its stronghold areas. In other words, the BJP does not merely need to retain Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and regain Rajasthan, it needs to perform very well in a triangular contest in Delhi and, hopefully, even win.

For the BJP the bar has been set much higher for a very good reason: this is going to be first real electoral test of Narendra Modi’s popularity ever since he was chosen as the BJP-NDA prime ministerial candidate on September 13 this year. Maybe this is unfair since the ultimate verdict in the states will depend on local issues and the performance of the respective Chief Ministers and challengers. The Modi factor can, at best, have an incremental factor—acting as a booster or a depressant for the BJP.

However, the terms of the encounter has not been decided by the political pundits but by the BJP. In organising a punishing election schedule for the Gujarat Chief Minister and using him as a force multiplier, the BJP appears to have used the state Assembly elections as much a test of Modi’s appeal as the leadership of Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Vasundhara Raje and Hashvardhan. In a meeting in East Delhi on November 30 at which Modi was present, the BJP’s Delhi Chief Ministerial candidate Harshvardhan made it clear that by electing a BJP government in place of Sheila Dikshit’s 15-year tenure, the voters would also be facilitating Modi’s election as Prime Minister next year.

In 1993, in the aftermath of the demolition of the shrine in Ayodhya, the BJP had fought the Assembly elections in five states on the slogan: “Aaj panch Pradesh, kal sara desh”. It had deliberately linked the Assembly polls to its wider quest for national power. Indeed, at that time there was a belief that a shaky government of P.V. Narasimha Rao would have crumbled had the results been advantageous to the BJP. Unfortunately for the BJP, it lost Uttar Pradesh to a Samajwadi Party-BSP alliance and Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh to the Congress. The BJP won Delhi handsomely and Rajasthan narrowly.

True, it was a narrow 3-2 advantage to the Congress but since the BJP had hyped up its expectations and projected a 5-0 victory, the results proved a colossal disappointment. Far from adding to the fragility of the Narasimha Rao Government, the Assembly results strengthened the Congress and allowed it to rule for a full-term till 1996. In the 1996 general election the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha and the 13-day government did set the stage for a big win in 1998 and 1999. However, in hindsight, over-pitching the 1993 elections proved very costly for the party and delayed its triumph at the Centre for at least five years.

I am not suggesting that the 1993 experience is likely to be repeated next week: history doesn’t repeat itself mindlessly. Yet the BJP should be aware that linking its national fortunes and the political trajectory of its great hope to the Assembly polls carries a high element of risk.

The Congress just has to perform half-decently for it to slow down the BJP’s momentum. Whether this means ousting the BJP in Chhattisgarh  and clinging on to either Rajasthan or Delhi is something that will become evident on counting day. For the moment the Congress is definitely the underdog in the poll stakes and the bar it has set for itself is much, much lower than that set by the BJP for itself. Even a solitary victory will give solace to the Congress and reassure its dispirited troops that even if it can’t win in 2014, it can deprive Modi of a victory.

However, in the event the Congress falters in all the states and is unable to form a government in any of the four main states we are likely to see a dramatic change in the political chemistry of India. First, for all practical purposes India will have a lame-duck by the evening of December 8. Secondly, the stage would have been set for many small, regional parties to seek a pre-poll understanding with the NDA. And finally, we will see many rats deserting a sinking ship and discovering virtues in a man they had earlier decried as a living ogre. 

Sunday Pioneer, December 1, 2013

MODI TRUSTED FOR HIS VISION OF INDIA’S FUTURE

By Swapan Dasgupta

In 2010, in a speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain that saw off the proposed Nazi invasion of Britain, David Cameron referred to his country as the “junior partner” of the mighty US during that battle. Needless to say, the British Prime Minister was wrong: The US did not join the war against the Axis powers in Europe until December 1941 when Hitler declared war in solidarity with Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Some time later, while appearing on an American chat house, Cameron compounded his history malfunction by being clueless when asked the meaning of ‘Magna Carta’ and the name of the gentleman who penned the stirring words of ‘Rule Britannia’.

If the voluble Minister of State for everything-apart-from-HRD Shashi Tharoor was to use the same yardstick for the Prime Minister of the land of his birth as he does to the humble natives of India, Cameron would have been dismissed as a man who lacked the intellectual rigour and breadth of reading to be leader of a country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. But, and wisely so, Tharoor would never insist that the leadership of the two main parties in Britain should be chosen from those who had acquitted themselves honourably in competitions such as Mastermind, Brain of Britain and University Challenge — the British variants of the Bourn Vita quiz contests that people of an earlier generation may be familiar with. After all, didn’t Cameron graduate with a first class degree from Oxford?

The suggestion that politicians shouldn’t ideally make factual errors in their public utterances is well taken. After all, they have an army of researchers to provide them inputs and check for possible inaccuracies. Yet, errors and other boo-boos do creep in. Indira Gandhi was a canny politician but her knowledge of international economics was elementary. She relied on her speech-writers for guidance. Unfortunately, one of those speech-writers copy-pasted a big chunk of an article written by a well-respected Pakistani economist into one of her speeches. There were many red faces in the PMO when this plagiarism was detected. Yet, I don’t think that this bloomer caused anyone, least of all those who wrote histories of Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership, to suggest that she was not suited to high office on this count. The fact that she never completed her degree in Oxford was also never regarded as a disqualification. Indira was admired and berated for what she did in office and how she moulded India.

Likewise, Rahul Gandhi will not be judged on the strength of his frequent drop-outs from exalted institutions and his dodgy academic credentials, but on the strength of what he says and how well he connects to the Indian electorate. He would certainly not pass the Tharoor test of erudition but this failure by itself shouldn’t make him a lesser man. His puerile ideas would. Yet, ironically, these ideas have come from too much reading and too little experience of how 99.99 per cent of Indians live, laugh and cry.

Narendra Modi, the man who is making life a little uncomfortable for the babalogs who have made the bungalows of Lutyens’ Delhi into their social preserve, may well be guilty of narrating history in a very Hindu way: As a katha. Like Hindu lore, he may have perceived time as yug rather than years; and he may even have collapsed the thin wall separating history and mythology. In this, he is as guilty as anyone who is unapologetic about facets of their Hindu inheritance. However, should the fact that he appears to have a very thin layer of cosmopolitan modernity necessarily suggest that he lacks leadership and political far-sightedness?

The likes of Tharoor and others who are in a state of flutter over Modi’s alleged historical inaccuracies and his appropriation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s legacy would probably have been equally disoriented over a third Gujarati who didn’t quite fit the mould of babalog behaviour: Mahatma Gandhi. It is often forgotten that Gandhi raised the hackles of a lot of well-established Indians of his day. These included Lokmanya Tilak, Rabindranath Tagore and Bipin Chandra Pal. Even those like Subhas Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jayaprakash Narayan who were important in the Congress accepted the Mahatma’s leadership with caveats.

Yet, I don’t know too many Indians who repudiated Gandhi solely on account of his culinary fads, his bizarre sexual experiments and his obsessive non-violence. That was because these weren’t central to Gandhiji’s main mission: To secure India’s Independence from foreign rule. Modi’s knowledge of history may well be imperfect and he should certainly be a little careful about his juxtaposition of facts. But to base our judgment of Modi on the strength of his knowledge of historical minutiae is akin to judging Tharoor on the basis of his very plummy accent or the fact that his lived experience of India is extremely patchy.

If popular faith has been reposed on Modi it is on account of his vision for the future, not his knowledge about the past. This is why the recent kerfuffle over Alexander, Taxila, Chandragupta and Sardar Patel is a wonderful ‘time pass’. The real battles are being waged elsewhere — in an idiom that both Tharoor and I are unfamiliar with. 

Sunday Pioneer, November 10, 2013

Don’t feed on the intolerance of Patna bombers

By Swapan Dasgupta

Had the bomb planted just beyond the secure D-area of Patna’s Gandhi Maidan actually exploded last Sunday during Narendra Modi’s Hunkar rally, the country could well have been suffering the fallout of a colossal tragedy. It was plain lucky that the explosion, which would inevitably have resulted in a stampede and ensuing acts of violence, didn’t happen. Yet, it is a commentary on the growing bitterness of politics that the significance of this close shave has been deliberately underplayed. Indeed, attention has been sought to be wilfully diverted from a sinister act of subversion.  

The expression of political differences that invariably happen in the long run-up to any general election is an indispensable part of democracy. The general election of 2014 has become doubly interesting because the battle of political parties has been peppered by a riveting clash of personalities.

The announcement of Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate happened on September 13—not that long ago. However, it has taken just 50 days for the political atmosphere to be electrified. Thanks to the energy generated by the supporters of Modi,  the country, it would seem, has been divided into those who support the Gujarat Chief Minister enthusiastically and those who oppose him with equal passion. Despite being the challenger, Modi has quite successfully managed to catapult himself into the centre-stage, to the point where he is now setting the agenda and invoking the editorial ire of The New York Times which gratuitously found his rise “deeply troubling to many Indians.”

Whether India, as an opinion poll suggested, cries out for a leader blessed with decisiveness and integrity is for voters to decide. The general election will also be the occasion for voters to give their verdict on other lofty questions such as the preferred economic path, dynastic rule and the divergent perceptions of the so-called idea of India. On the other hand, many voters may prefer to view the contest through the prism of localism and community identities.

It is improper to be judgmental about the thinking that leads individuals and communities to decide which side to back. There is nothing called the ‘right’ way of thinking; and the accusing finger of ‘false consciousness’ that Marxists love to point at those who disagree with them is based on the dubious premise that there is something resembling ‘true’ consciousness. An Indian election is fascinating precisely because the expressions of self-interest and national interest happen through so many different—often bizarre—routes.

Take the vastly different perceptions of those who support Modi. To a handful, he epitomises a viable alternative to statist economics; to others, he is a modern-day variant of Shivaji, crusading against a ‘Delhi Sultanate’; and to yet others, he is an Indian Bismarck capable of ruling a fractious country with decisive leadership. In Bihar, his appeal is often based on his backward caste status and the fact that he began life selling tea on a railway platform.  

Likewise, those who oppose Modi do so for vastly diverse reasons. Some are deterred by the 2002 riots in Gujarat, others question the viability of an economic model that is insufficiently mindful of entitlements, and the likes of Nitish Kumar and the Communists liken him to a fascist. Yet others dub him ‘authoritarian’ and are fearful that he invokes strong Muslim opposition.

The importance of the election campaign is that it allows all these range of perceptions to play out. Unfortunately this rich democratic tradition is seriously compromised by two strands. First, there is the belief that the failure of one side to prevail will involve the disintegration and death of India. Such heightened certitudes are based on the presumption that only one side has the monopoly of truth, wisdom and political power. It leads to equating opponents as enemies.

Secondly, there is the associated belief that all means are legitimate to prevent the other side from winning. It was possibly this misplaced rigidity, as much as security lapses, which gave those who have no faith in either India or democracy the space to undertake the serial bombings in Patna.

Nominally, the Indian Mujahedeen was responsible but those who chose to look the other way and pretended nothing happened must bear some moral blame. 

Sunday Times of Indioa, November 3, 2013

Sins of Emergency repeating themselves

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is sad that Indian newspapers, unlike their British and American counterparts, have not yet digitised their archives. Had they done so, I would have been able to offer readers a selection of the choicest quotes from Professor K.K. Tiwari, once a Minister of Information and Broadcasting in Rajiv Gandhi’s Government.

Tiwari, who was said to have been a teacher of English, loved using Shakespearian analogies to pour venom on the Congress’ then favourite hate figures, notably V.P. Singh who had emerged as the foremost challenger to the Rajiv government. Some of Tiwari’s interventions were very funny and the others were mystifying. Most people viewed him as a ridiculous loudmouth who used the government monopoly to transform the electronic media—AIR and Doordarshan—into propaganda vehicles for the Congress.

However, Tiwari wasn’t quite the buffoon he sometimes appeared to be. Subsequent investigations suggested that he had a major role in designing the St Kitts frame-up targeting the son of V.P. Singh—a conspiracy in which, quite regrettably, a section of the media played a collusive role.

The transgressions of the Emergency which even led to AIR blacklisting Kishore Kumar for his non-performance at a Youth Congress function—surely a warning to Lata Mangeshkar to now prepare herself for recriminations after she publicly endorsed Narendra Modi last Friday—have been well documented. Less recorded are the ways in which the Rajiv Gandhi government tried to narrow the space for dissent by putting pressure on the print media. The Indian Express, Statesman and particular individuals in The Hindu were targeted for unearthing the dirt on the Bofors scandal. But pressure was put on all publications to toe the line. At one time, the Ministry of External Affairs even had two IFS officers working full-time to ‘manage’ the newspapers.

I mention these incidents from the past because there are definite indications that history is repeating itself. Having erred in its belief that the anointment of Narendra Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate would lead to a favourable polarisation in favour of the Congress and UPA, a disoriented regime has reacted in panic. Where persuasion and better governance should have been the natural democratic reaction to political adversity, the government has embarked on the path of calumny, subterfuge and arm-twisting.

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal whose political ratings inside the government took a nosedive after Rahul Gandhi rubbished the ordinance to insulate convicted politicians from immediate disqualification, has crafted his rehabilitation strategy with a frontal attack on Modi. In itself that is a legitimate exercise in political warfare. But Sibal descended from the sublime to the ridiculous by blaming Modi for the sharp increase in the price of onions.

On his part, I&B Minister Manish Tiwari, who must take exceptional care that he doesn’t come to be viewed as the natural inheritor of K.K. Tiwari’s mantle, has put out a circular warning broadcasters with uplinking facilities that they risk their future by putting the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech on par with others (namely Modi) who attempt to steal the thunder. Since it is an open question whether Manmohan Singh will address India from Red Fort in 2014, this silly advisory is less aimed at protecting the fragile dignity of the incumbent as instructing the electronic media to reduce their Modi coverage.

Then there are those who, even at this late stage, insist that Modi should be ruled out of the 2014 race using the police powers at the disposal of the government. In recent weeks, inordinate pressure has been put on the country’s premier investigative agencies to call Modi for questioning and thereupon file an FIR against him on the charge of masterminding encounter deaths. Pressure has also been put to somehow or the other implicate Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley in a case that dates back to 2008.

That officials haven’t succumbed are due to two facts. First, the political antennae of the babus are very sensitive to stirrings on the ground. The emerging consensus within babudom this Diwali is that the UPA isn’t coming back. Secondly, the recent Supreme Court order on tenure has ensured that civil servants and policemen won’t do anything remotely irregular unless it is accompanied by a written ministerial order.

So far the attempt to make politics into an abattoir has not succeeded but a section of the government believes that no means are too petty to fight Modi. The manner in which advertising largesse is being dangled in front of media companies who are experiencing a squeeze on account of the general economic slowdown will no doubt see many channels and publications suddenly going soft on the UPA Government. There has already been the curious spectacle of media managers donning the editorial mantle and penning articles advising the country to be wary of Modi. Presumably, these are not aimed at influencing public opinion and calculated only to informing the money-disbursal teams in the ministries that the hints are being acted on.

Past experience suggests that last ditch attempts to undo the damage inflicted over the past four years are rarely successful. Therefore, unless the next six months lead to something dramatic, all the indications are that this may be the last Diwali, for some time to come, that many of the anxious political stalwarts are going to enjoy in a ministerial bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi.

A Happy Diwali to them and to everyone else

Political versus Personal

By Swapan Dasgupta

Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar is an experienced and consummate politician with a firm grip on the administration of his economically backward state. As such, his speech to a Janata Dal (United) convention in Rajgir on October 29 was a masterly performance and constitutes the most coherent attack on the prime ministerial candidate of his erstwhile coalition partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that his articulation of his scepticism of Narendra Modi was more effective than anything proffered by Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and his colleagues in the Congress Party.

However, every political intervention has a context. In the case of the Bihar Chief Minister, that context was defined by the massive Hunkar rally addressed by Modi in Patna last Sunday. It was not merely Modi’s combative address and the fact that there were at least five lakh people from all over Bihar, not to mention the countless millions who heard his speech on television, which shaped Nitish’s response. Equally significant was the fact that the rally was conducted in the midst of serial blasts that left six people dead and nearly 100 people injured.

Having been at the rally and having observed the proceedings from a discreet corner of the large podium, I would suggest that it was nothing short of a miracle that the event did not end in a monumental tragedy where the casualty figures could have been horrific.

In planting 18 or more timer bombs at different parts of the large Gandhi Maidan, the activists of the Indian Mujahedeen—the believed perpetrators of the attack—had two principal objectives. First, they wanted to kill those who were unlucky enough to be situated near the explosion sites. More important, they placed the explosives in such a way as to create panic in the crowd and trigger a stampede that would undoubtedly have taken a larger toll. In the process, the rally would have had to be terminated abruptly, perhaps even before Modi had the opportunity of speaking to those who had come to cheer him enthusiastically. The aftermath of the chaos could even have led to rioting in the streets of Patna.

It is either fortuitous or even an act of providence that nearly half the low-intensity bombs failed to explode. For example, had the bomb which was placed just outside the ‘sanitised’ D-area exploded, the forward rush of a panic stricken crowd would have endangered the podium and could even have brought it crashing down.

The seriousness of the planned attack cannot be minimised and Nitish Kumar is too experienced an administrator not to have realised it. Predictably, there were fingers pointed at the state administration for the casualness with which it treated security arrangements for such a huge public meeting. The Bihar Chief Minister knew that the charges were grave, especially because there were intelligence inputs that suggested the Modi rally could be targeted by subversives who have scant respect for democratic traditions.

Under the circumstances, Nitish Kumar did what adroit, if cynical, politicians are prone to doing: diverting attention from his area of vulnerability. At Rajgir, he insisted that no intelligence alerts had been received and that, in any case, he had instructed his administration to take all necessary security arrangements. Having brushed off the charges levelled against him and his government, he proceeded to couch his opposition to Modi in hyperbolic overstatements. Modi, Nitish insisted, was not an ordinary politician: he was a fascist, a follower of Adolf Hitler who was prone to using the methods of Josef Goebbels to mislead people.

Mercifully, India has become accustomed to witnessing political attacks being laced with references from inter-war European history. In the mod-1970s, it was the Communist Party of India, then in alliance with Indira Gandhi thanks to Moscow’s strategic partnership with Delhi, which routinely labelled Jayaprakash Narayan a “fascist”. In the early-1990s that abuse was hurled at L.K. Advani in the wake of the Ayodhya movement. And today, Nitish Kumar has deemed it fit to use similar invectives against Modi.

Whether the popular yearning for a strong leader automatically reeks of fascism is a worthy subject of debate. However, whatever may be the Bihar Chief Minister’s understanding of the man on whose account he unilaterally broke his long-standing alliance with the BJP, the fact remains that the Bihar administration had an obligation to ensure the safe and peaceful conduct of the Hunkar rally. He claims to have done so but facts suggest otherwise.

The conduct of the state administration is revealing. First, it put obstacles in the way of the BJP holding the rally in the whole of the Gandhi Maidan. Secondly, it invited the President of India to be in Patna on the same day as the Hunkar rally, knowing fully well that the President’s security drill would create near-insurmountable obstacles in the path of those wishing to attend the rally. Thirdly, in an act of astonishing churlishness, the Bihar Government let it be known that it neither possessed bulletproof SUVs or jammers for Modi’s use. In short, the Bihar Government put out a clear message to its officers that Modi being an unwelcome guest, it wasn’t necessary to oblige the BJP.

It was this attitude that led to not more than six constables being deputed for sanitising the Gandhi Maidan on the day prior to the rally, the complete absence of any CCTV cameras at Gandhi Maidan and the absence of any senior police officer at the rally site last Sunday. Nor, for that matter did the Bihar Police have any emergency evacuation plans ready, not even after the bombs had started going off. There was no bomb disposal unit present at the venue to even take care of the explosives that had been detected by the crowd.

If my personal respect for Nitish Kumar wasn’t so high, I would even have suggested that he wanted the rally to end in chaos. What he probably didn’t calculate was that his antipathy would be picked up by the terrorists to try and turn chaos into disaster.  

ASIAN AGE, November 1, 2013

To win, captain NaMo needs a dream team

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is not merely the weather—the arrival of the brief autumn—that has changed in Lutyens’ Delhi: there has also been a discernible shift in the political environment over the past three weeks. The most important facet of this change has been the delayed recognition of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s ability to be a force multiplier.

Following the public meetings in Rewari and Rohini (Delhi), the chattering classes discourse on Modi has shifted quite dramatically. The belief that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate was a regional upstart who would fail to make a mark in national politics—the Gujarat-isn’t-India theory—has abruptly given way to a grudging recognition that Modi is a ‘phenomenon’, probably symptomatic of a new urban India that makes up with energy what it lacks in refinement. The size and sheer exuberance of the crowds at his rallies has left people wondering why they didn’t detect the trend earlier.

Additionally, the re-engagement of Telugu Desam Party chief N.Chandrababu Naidu and the supportive utterances of YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy have blunted the still outstanding question: Modi is popular but will such a ‘polarising’ figure be able to secure allies and secure the allies to cross the 272 mark? Admittedly, the question will remain unanswered till counting day but the prophecies and back of the envelope calculations are no longer bound in negative certitudes. Earlier mainstream political punditry deemed that Modi would at best be a figure of fringe inspiration—another Barry Goldwater, for those enamoured of US parallels—and that in the age of coalitions he would lose all the battles but have the best songs. After Naidu’s apparent willingness to sup with him and Reddy’s cryptic observation that NaMo is a good administrator who must now build a grand secular platform, the sceptics have had to gulp a little.

What appears to be emerging is a two-fold pattern. At one level there is recognition and anecdotal evidence that Modi’s personal popularity is unrivalled and reaching cult status. Secondly, the belief that personal popularity would be offset by the BJP’s geographical reach of some 300 Lok Sabha seats has been supplemented by the realisation that regional parties in non-BJP areas see potential benefits in climbing on to the NaMo bandwagon. In other words, there is awareness small parties with localised influence have begun to feel that an association with Modi would give them a booster dose and facilitate the harvesting of incremental votes. Recall that in 1998 and 1999, it was the independent appeal of Atal Behari Vajpayee that contributed to the BJP—a political pariah from 1992 to 1996—shedding its isolation and emerging as the nucleus of a grand alliance that incorporated some 20 parties.

For Modi, the recognition by the Establishment (including the Prime Minister) that he is a formidable challenge to the Congress’ hold over the Centre is a significant achievement. But this advance in turn has thrown up new and interesting challenges that have to be met before the real campaign gets underway. A winning campaign necessitates that Modi complements his inspirational rallies with credible local faces of change. This is not going to be easy: the BJP has not experienced a process of self-renewal since the Ayodhya agitation catapulted the recruits gained from the JP movement into the second-rung of the leadership—and for which L.K. Advani deserves special credit.

Modi is the superstar of the 2014 campaign. But to turn a good film into a blockbuster he needs a competent supporting cast of new and energetic faces that inspire public confidence. Hitherto he has skirted the issue but Modi cannot indefinitely put off a parallel project to reshape the BJP in a modernist image. In his speeches, the Gujarat Chief Minister is promising a new approach to the problems of governance. He is tapping the restlessness of Indians who are impatient and who are not content to settle for the second-best. Having pitched his expectations high, he would falter in the event of any major disharmony between his ideas and his candidates. An inspirational captain cannot be burdened by a team that many would regard as being part of the problem and not the solution.

Sunday Times of India, October 6, 2013

SPIRIT OF MODI IS DETECTED EVERYWHERE

By Swapan Dasgupta

If my good friend and Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tiwari who is showering media organisations with the full generosity of Bharat Nirman was to make himself even more popular, he should initiate a six-figure, tax free award for the most ‘supportive’ newspaper headline of the day. That he hasn’t done so as yet is unfortunate but he should be inspired by a headline on page four of the Delhi edition of Indian Express which may have displayed devastating political prescience: “No Modi effect, BJD sweeps civic polls.”

That the people living in the small urban clusters of Odisha are voting along traditional lines for municipal polls and not being swayed by pictures of NaMo pasted on walls by a BJP that still remains a poor third party in the state should, perhaps, be giving sleepless nights to someone in distant Gandhinagar. Indeed, by this logic, some of those BJP leaders who felt left out and eclipsed by the Parliamentary Board resolution of September 13 may still be fancying their chances as today’s Lazarus. Who knows, the ripples from small town Odisha may even persuade the BJP that putting up umpteen hoardings of the Man from Gujarat may not help divert the attention of the voters of Delhi state from the shortcomings of its local leadership.

In the whodunits of the pre-1945 era, the invariable refrain was that the butler did it. In the pre-election scenario of India 2013, the spirit of Modi is detected everywhere. According to this ‘narrative’ (a good word jargonised by a tribe of academic mystics across the Atlantic), good and ‘secular’ Indians are busy  exorcising the evil spirit from their lives—as the Indian Express detected they successfully did in 65 of the 66 urban bodies that polled last week in Odisha. Likewise, the bad, communal people who don’t share the prescribed “idea of India” are apparently busy invoking the evil asura at mahapanchayats and sending forth the fanatics to either butcher innocent minorities or destroy their homes.

Who says “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” was a well-crafted but macabre Hollywood fantasy? According to the “narrative” we hear from alarmed intellectuals who are reading and re-reading their dusty copies of William Shirer, Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans, India in 2013 is exactly where a European country was in 1933. The only difference is that in 80 years a black paintbrush moustache has evolved into a white beard.

Like the ‘foreign hand’ which Indira Gandhi used to warn the country about from the months preceding the Emergency, sections of India have been engulfed by something resembling a ‘great fear’. For intellectuals, it is the great fear of a ‘narrative’ change and attendant losses of privileges that came from being part of the larger Nehruvian consensus; for a minusculity of aesthetes who are uncomfortable with people they didn’t go to school and college with, there are contrived fears of being forced to drink gau-mutra as a sun-downer; and for yet others, it is a fear of the very ‘idea of Modi’ that is disorienting.

Whether or not all these diverse fears will coalesce in 2014 to give the thumbs-down to the challenger is best left for assessment in the coming months, particularly after the December elections to the state Assemblies. Frankly speaking, it doesn’t matter very much if the intellectuals and the aesthetes treat the electoral outcome as a wake or a memorial meeting for a dispensation that has outlived its national utility. What is more relevant is whether the unending alarmist propaganda  has a more sinister objective: to create panic among India’s Muslim minority.

Indeed, this is what appears to be happening. The reason why a small incident in Muzaffarnagar escalated into a serious communal riot had everything to do with the cynical politics of the Samajwadi Party-led government of Uttar Pradesh. What some people hoped would be a ‘controlled’ conflagration to reinforce a ghetto mentality abruptly went out of control and led to some deaths and large-scale dispossession. Ideally, the anger of those who saw their belligerence backfire horribly as the clashes spread to the countryside should have been directed at the political leaders who cynically used them as cannon fodder. Unfortunately, they have been encouraged by the entire secular establishment to view the Muzaffarnagar riots as a trailer of what is to come if Modi becomes PM. Cabinet Minister and Congress ‘strategist’ Jairam Ramesh said this quite explicitly, and this inflammatory formulation was greeted without any sense of outrage by the professional secularists. Indeed, the tensions in UP have become the occasion to press for the grotesque Communal Violence Bill which aims at the permanent compartmentalisation of India into a majority and minorities.

The reason should be quite obvious. There is a desperate attempt to shift the focus of the general election from the UPA’s governance deficit, its patronage of corruption, its failure to harness India’s potential and its lacklustre leadership to identity issues. The calculation is that a sustained policy of selective indignation—no tears were shed for the Dalits who too suffered grievously from the riots—and the arousal of minority anger will in turn trigger a counter-reaction and shift the focus away from bread and butter issues. Behind the lofty concern for the “idea of India” lies a wilful desire to blind voters from the most pressing issue: the future of India. 

Sunday Pioneer, September 22, 2013

India's Rewari Moment

By Swapan Dasgupta

Within the media, there is always a fierce debate on what constitutes ‘news’. More to the point, the discussions invariably centre on the hierarchy of news. The events in Syria and the tizzy over a possible US intervention in some form or the other is big, front page news in the ‘quality’ newspapers of the West, and quite understandably so. However, with the exception of one Chennai-based newspaper that pursues an ‘anti-imperialist’ editorial stance, the diplomatic and other turbulence over the future of Prasident Bashar al-Assad is inevitably relegated to the ‘foreign page’.  

Some people may argue that this disdain for ‘world news’ is a commentary on India’s insular ways. That may well be the case but India is not alone is putting itself at the centre of the world. How many column inches were devoted in the western media to the devastation in Uttarakhand that led more than 4,000 deaths earlier this summer? As the hardnosed-cynical news editors used to say: ‘a dead dog on your doorstep is more important than 400 dead in China.”

In India, there is a further complication when attempting to define what constitutes ‘national’ news and what is ‘regional’ tittle-tattle. This came to the fore last week in a curious sort of way. The anointment of Narendra Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate was preceded by the great sulk of some of the party’s patriarchs. This initial reluctance to toe the majority line was minutely followed in the ‘national’ media and was the subject matter of umpteen TV talk shows. To the Delhi Establishment, this last-ditch revolt of the veterans provided confirmation that while Modi had many energetic supporters, his climb to the top was not going to be uncontested. If Modi can’t prevail inside his own party, it was argued by those whose fascination for the Gujarat Chief Minister is less than lukewarm, how can he not end up being a fringe phenomenon in the 2014 general election?

Ideally, such scepticism would have carried little weight had the descriptions of Modi’s public meetings in Hyderabad last month and Jaipur earlier this month been fully digested. But, like the sectarian clashes involving Bodos and Muslims in Assam last year which got relatively less play in the national media compared to the Muzaffarnagar riots which happened barely two hours motoring distance from the National Capital, the experiences of Hyderabad and Jaipur were seriously discounted.

Last Sunday Modi spoke at an ex-servicemen’s rally in Rewari in Haryana which, again, is within close proximity of Delhi. Actually, it was more than just a gathering of ex-servicemen where a former army chief was also on the dais: it became a mass rally where villagers from the neighbourhood also turned up in their tractor trailers. And the attendance, said to be anywhere in the region of two lakh people and above, exceeded the most optimistic expectations of everyone. This was more so because the BJP does not count that region of Haryana as a stronghold: it won one of the 10 seats in the 2004 Lok Sabha election and failed to open its account in 2009. More important, unlike political rallies in Haryana which are dominated by the wizened village Taus, the composition of the crowd was mainly youth who didn’t come to hear him but to cheer him on. Judging from the ‘Modi, Modi” chants they kept up, they were there not be convinced but display their conviction.

More than anything else the Rewari meeting has transformed the ‘national’ news buzz. Delhi’s political establishment which believes it has its finger firmly on the pulse of the nation has abruptly changed its attitude towards this pesky interloper from Gujarat who imagined he was capable of dislodging the modern-day Delhi Sultanate. Eminent notables who, until the other day, were making weighty pronouncements such as ‘India is not Gujarat’ changed their tone dramatically. They commented favourably on the attendance, Modi’s eloquence and the fact that he made a ‘responsible’ speech on defence that didn’t involve demanding that the local Jats and Ahirs prepare themselves for a proverbial final war with Pakistan. Quite miraculously, the stereotypes built around Modi were dismantled and drastically remoulded.  

In the prologue to The American Future, historian Simon Schama wrote: “I can tell you exactly, give or take a minute or two, when American democracy came back from the dead because I was there: 7.15 pm, Central Time, 3 January 2008, Precinct 53, Theodre Roosevelt High.” With these dramatic opening lines, Schama described the grassroots spontaneity that led to (the then) Senator Barack Obama scoring an upset in the Iowa primary.

I can’t be so lyrical but elections, I once read, is best charted “in flight”. By that process, ‘national’ India experienced its Rewari moment last Sunday afternoon when it felt the pulse of excitement over a candidate who is well and truly an outsider to Lutyens’ Delhi.

Of course there are still outstanding questions over Modi’s ability to attract some coalition partners in states where the BJP can at best be a spoiler and not a winner. But when the intellectual classes deftly move away from questioning Modi popularity to articulating their wariness of his alleged challenge to the “idea of India”, you can smell the change in the political air of Delhi. Maybe Indian democracy is liberating itself from the condescension of those who imagined they were born to rule. 

Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, September 20, 2013

UPA HOPED BJP ITSELF WILL NIP MODI

By Swapan Dasgupta

In the realms of belief or even superstition, Friday the 13^th is regarded as either hugely unlucky by some or just another day by others. That the BJP leadership chose this day to push through the formal anointment of Narendra Modi as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate suggests that their court astrologers didn’t attach negative consequences to a major decision taken on that day.

The same can hardly be said for those who were determined to prevent Modi’s elevation to a position that has hitherto been occupied by only Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. They seemed hell-bent on preventing any categorical announcement till after the Assembly election. The calculation was two-fold. First, it would be argued that there were other chief ministers who equally deserved the post of shadow prime minister. The tussle between the Chief Ministers in turn would give the requisite space for Advani to emerge as a compromise choice by virtue of his standing as the “tallest leader” of the party. Secondly, and I am not making this suggestion casually, there was a plot to use the intervening months, to implicate Modi in a judicial tangle, with some discreet help from those whose business it is to blend politics with skulduggery.

By persisting with the Parliamentary Board meeting last Friday evening, the BJP, in effect, pre-empted the possibility of an unending bout of machinations that would have left the wider world believing that the main opposition party was in the throes of a civil war and unfit for a role in government. The likelihood of some dissenting voices to Modi’s anointment always existed from those who feared their own marginalisation from the centre-stage of politics. That the BJP leadership heard them out and then proceeded to do what had to be done hasn’t compromised the larger project to win power in 2014. If anything, it has certainly reinforced the party’s democratic credentials. That the patriarch chose to wallow in petulant isolation didn’t enhance his image as a ‘selfless politician’ (as his former aide claimed on TV); it made him an object of pity, if not outright ridicule—a man who was out of tune with the contemporary world. To put it bluntly, Advani demanded a veto and threw a tantrum when this was politely rejected.

To those who familiar with the inner life of the BJP and its wider ‘parivar’, Advani’s dogged resistance to an onrush of sentiment was doomed to failure. However, there are reasons to believe that many people, not least the Congress, felt otherwise. At a time when the regime has been starved of good news, the curious projection of RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan as India’s newest sex symbol and the prospect of a civil war in the BJP were developments the clever Congress looked forward to.

Indeed, the Congress strategy for the past two months, since Modi was appointed head of the BJP campaign committee, was to underplay its significance by painting the Gujarat CM as a small-time local leader. It was no accident that over the past few weeks the Congress has fielded a disproportionate number of its Gujarat state leaders on TV shows where the discussions centred on Modi. The plan was always clear: paint Modi as a small-town upstart, at best a regional chieftan, and puncture his standing in that way. The Congress strategy was designed to pin Modi down on the so-called human development parameters of Gujarat. The ruling party strategists reposed enormous faith in the ability of Advani to check the Modi advance.

In public pronouncements, the Congress has feigned complete disinterest in the internal affairs of the BJP. Its more supercilious ministers (most of them, unfortunately, alumni of my old college, St Stephen’s) have barely been able to conceal their social contempt of a leader who didn’t share a privileged upbringing. However, behind this apparent unconcern has lurked a great fear which in turn bred tactical confusion. The Congress believes that Modi is generating a euphoric response and they believed that the most appropriate way to stop the challenger was to either rule him out of the race or create sufficient controversy within the BJP to muddy the waters. In short, the Congress banked on extraneous issues such as the well-crafted Vanzara letter and the Advani revolt to be its containment strategy.

Now that this strategy has failed and Modi is indeed trying to convert Election 2014 into a quasi-presidential race, the Congress has to rethink its strategy. The Trojan Horse approach has to yield to a more frontal confrontation. For the Congress, the coming days pose an intellectual challenge. Should it try to convert the whole battle into an anti-Modi jihad? Wouldn’t that, however, involve playing by the rules set by the other side? Should it pretend Modi doesn’t exist and merely highlight Sonia Gandhi’s Lady Bountiful acts? That is a possibility but somehow a Bharat Nirman-centric approach may end up being a crashing bore. Should it emphasise its lofty “idea of India” and leave the demolition of Modi to intellectuals such as a TV anchor who suggested to her Facebook friends that with Modi as PM, Indians would be encouraged to drink their own urine for dessert?

Facetiousness apart, the Congress is still coming to terms with a viable strategy to counter Modi. Rahul Gandhi’s dilettantism isn’t helping matters. Actually, the heir-apparent could even pose a problem for the BJP: how do you defeat an opponent who refuses to join the fight?

Sunday Pioneer, September 15, 2013 

The surge from below

By Swapan Dasgupta

In the history of the Sixties’ counter-culture, the anti-Vietnam War protests of 1968 occupy a very special place. The ageing radicals I encounter at various reunions in the pubs of London often recall the 100,000-strong demonstration chanting ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh’ outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square one overcast October 44 years ago. The more impish among them also recall how some contrarians with an exaggerated sense of self-worth even made the journey from the sublime to the ridiculous: the earnest activists of a Trotskyist sect distributed leaflets explaining “Why we are not marching!”

It would be cruel to equate L.K. Advani’s missive explaining his non-attendance at the BJP Parliamentary Board meeting last Friday with those who missed the bus in 1968. But it may not be entirely inaccurate to suggest that in 2013 India, Advani is probably as representative of the ‘parivar’ mood as the Socialist Labour League was of British radicalism in 1968. By sitting morosely in Prithviraj Road while BJP workers celebrated, Advani wilfully reduced himself to a petulant footnote. However, he has also ensured that even if coalition vagaries deprive Narendra Modi of a Race Course Road tenancy next year, the BJP will not turn fall back on its ponderous nostalgia machine.  

Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj were cleverer: they advertised their dissent but didn’t sour the party spirit. They, along with Rajnath Singh, can still aspire to be the second choice of the first party after the 2014 polls.

It is pertinent to highlight the sub-agendas that were temporarily put on hold amid the intense the emotional upheaval that greeted the declaration of Modi as the NDA’s PM-in-waiting. The euphoria was warranted. The transition of Modi from a strong regional leader to the PM-in-waiting didn’t happen as a consequence of his success in playing the committee game. On the contrary, Modi’s dogged sense of right and wrong and his unwillingness to make short-term compromises cut him off from the rest of the political pack. At the time of his second victory in 2007, Modi was very much a political loner—hounded by the all-powerful secular establishment, detached from the BJP national leadership and alienated from the apparatchiks of the RSS.

So, what happened in the intervening six years to allow the entire Parliamentary Board (from which he had been unceremonious dumped by the same Rajnath Singh in 2006) to pose for photographs with him last Friday?

The suggestion that it was the change of guard in RSS from the outspoken and indiscreet K.S. Sudarshan to the more quietly determined Mohan Bhagwat that did the trick, is over-simplistic. No doubt the RSS threw its entire moral weight behind the decision to declare Modi primus inter pares. But this was a considered collegiate decision, not the personal choice of the sarsanghchalak. And this decision in turn was forced on the RSS by a groundswell, the likes of which the country has not experienced in recent times. It may sound hyperbolic but the reality is that Modi’s elevation to the national stage was almost entirely a result of overwhelming and irresistible pressure from below.

The seemingly nail-biting sequence of events that led to the formal recognition of Modi as the BJP’s face for 2014 was actually only a formality. For the thousands of ordinary BJP workers and lakhs of the party’s well-wishers, Modi was the only national leader who counted ever since his third-term victory in Gujarat last December. The writing was always on the wall for everyone to see.

It wasn’t merely Advani who failed to decipher the script. India’s intellectual establishment, whose dislike of Modi had turned visceral, interpreted the Gujarat Chief Minister’s growing cult status among a section of the population as evidence of what Marxists call ‘false consciousness’—the inability to realise their own self and class interests. This resulted in the simple assertion ‘Modi is popular’ being turned into a more philosophical question ‘Why should Modi be popular?’ This in turn prompted a contrived conclusion: ‘Modi is unelectable’.

This expedient sleight of hand is a common mistake of politicians and public intellectuals: the equation of personal preference with the larger mood. Ronald Reagan was, for example, denied the Republican nomination in 1976 because the party establishment also deemed him unelectable and a deeply polarising figure. Most of the old guard of the Conservative Party had similar misgivings of Margaret Thatcher.

In the case of Modi, the BJP leadership has certainly gambled on his vote maximising potential. The newly-appointed PM candidate may not wipe the slate clean but compared to him, the rest of the BJP leaderboard lacks the inspirational thrust that alone can counter dodgy electoral arithmetic with positive chemistry. In 1995, Advani rightly calculated that only Atal Behari Vajpayee had the potential to add to the BJP’s committed and exuberant Hindu vote with incremental additions from the fence-sitters. Today, Modi’s great strength lies in his phenomenal appeal to a section that has little time for party politics but recognises the importance of a clear-sighted, charismatic leader with unquestionable personal integrity. If the BJP is experiencing a surge in the Ganga belt, it is almost exclusively due to Modi’s rock star appeal, particularly among the restless youth bubbling with raw energy. This is the incremental vote that Modi promises to bring into the NDA kitty. Countering this surge with invocations to a Nehruvian “idea of India” and dynastic paternalism is touching.

The issue is not whether Modi’s charisma can lead to a radical realignment that will see the BJP scoring unexpected victories in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. However, Modi alone among the BJP leaders has the appeal to maximise BJP’s yield in states where the party has a meaningful presence. And his pan-India appeal is such as to force other non-Congress parties to seriously explore the advantages of a pre-election understanding with the NDA.

At this stage, before the election campaign has even begun, an outright victory for the NDA looks a tall order. Indeed, the fear of a horribly fractured verdict is widespread. However, an imaginatively run, quasi-presidential campaign could alter equations dramatically. For the BJP, the Modi ‘gamble’ is not premised on the power of will alone.

Indian Express, September 16, 2013