Maharashtra and Haryana: BJP’s onward march continues The real challenge for the BJP is to better the Congress on the small matter of fulfilling its promises to the people of India G. Sampath

Maharashtra and Haryana: BJP's onward march continues The real challenge for the BJP is to better the Congress on the small matter of fulfilling its promises to the people of India G. Sampath 

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While there is no doubt the BJP owes both these triumphs to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine, one cannot discount the enormous contribution made by its one steadfast ally—the track record of the incumbent Congress regimes. Photo: PTI

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If politics were only about winning elections, then the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it would appear, cannot put a foot wrong. Two erstwhile Congress bastions are set to get their first-ever BJP chief ministers. Once the Maharashtra and Haryana governments are in place, eight major Indian states will have a government led by the BJP or its allies. In Maharashtra, by going it alone and emerging as the single-largest party, bagging nearly twice as many seats as the Shiv Sena, the BJP has reframed the terms of engagement with its long-time alliance partner. In Haryana, where, prior to the assembly elections, it had little to show by way of either support base or organizational capability, winning 47 seats out of the 90 on offer seems nothing short of miraculous. While there is no doubt the BJP owes both these triumphs to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine, one cannot discount the enormous contribution made by its one steadfast ally—the track record of the incumbent Congress regimes. The corruption and venality of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government in Maharashtra—whose biggest claim to fame from 15 years in power are the Adarsh housing society and irrigation scams—have been acknowledged by none other than its erstwhile chief minister Prithviraj Chavan. As for Haryana, in comparison to Maharashtra, it may be a smaller political arena. But here too the impunity of the Congress administration, which had been in power for almost a decade, has been no less impressive. In other words, both Maharashtra and Haryana, with 15 and 10 years, respectively, of supreme misrule, were ripe for the picking. A lot has been written about the BJP president's boldness and risk-taking ability in orchestrating the party's triumph in these two states. But going it alone was not such a gamble as it may have appeared to the BJP's old guard. Shah could see plainly that the pre-poll scenario in both these states was identical to that of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, where the BJP entered the fray with 10 years of Congress misrule to exploit, and none too many allies. Frustration with the status quo, and hope for something better, have always been drivers of voting preferences everywhere, over and above other steady-state factors such as caste, community, and other sectarian affiliations. In Maharashtra and Haryana, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had already taken care of the frustration part of the equation. Modi was the hope part—and he was exclusive to the BJP. Lacking a Modi-equivalent to offer the electorate, the Shiv Sena always stood to lose more from an alliance break-up than the BJP. But the Sena leadership did not seem to have understood this lack. And Shah was in no mood to entertain the trademark Sena arrogance, an arrogance that may have suited the late senior Thackeray but doesn't seem to be working so well for the younger generation of the clan. A whirlwind campaign followed, in which Modi spoke at some 26 meetings, and former party presidents Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh addressed more than 100 public meetings between them. They flogged the sins of the UPA for all it was worth, mouthing sentiments that were exactly what the audiences wanted to hear, and it paid handsome electoral dividends. For after all, given the same malaise, the cure that's good enough for the country (Modi), ought to be good enough for Maharashtra as well. Things were actually easier on the ground in Haryana, where Shah did not have to contend with the likes of the Shiv Sena or the NCP, or even the Maharashtra Congress. Neither the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) nor the state Congress was in any shape to pose a challenge to the BJP. The BJP's problem was more logistical and technical than political: it simply did not have enough leaders in its ranks who could cash in. Well, so what if the BJP did not have enough candidates in Haryana? It had Modi. Which meant that it can always borrow some from the parties that did. In the run up to the assembly polls, some 45 leaders from the Haryana Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) suddenly saw the light, and joined the BJP. The rest, as they say, is history. The BJP's victory in these two assembly polls has evoked two sets of narratives. The one that has received more play in the media, for reasons we shall not go into, has been the one propounded by Amit Shah. This holds that that the two victories are entirely due to the Modi wave, or tsunami, as he calls it, and further proof that Modi is the undisputed leader of the nation. The other narrative, pointing to the failure of the so-called Modi tsunami to deliver the BJP a clear majority in Maharashtra, makes a case for the limited range and appeal of the Modi brand. It points out that the BJP's vote share in the two states has not only not increased from what it was in the Lok Sabha polls, but has actually declined by 1.5 percentage points in Haryana (34.7% to 33.2%), implying that the Modi government has done nothing in the five months it has been in power that might induce an expansion of the BJP's vote share beyond what it was in May 2014. Of course, all said and done, the true test of leadership is not winning elections—though there seems to be a consensus fast developing that is all that matters—but what you do after you've won the elections and come to power. The Congress has won more elections than any other political party in India. If that is all that mattered, the average voter can't have anything to look forward to from the BJP, or from Modi. On the contrary, voter expectations are running high. And the "Modi tsunami" is but a symptom of these high expectations. Therefore the real challenge for the BJP—at the Centre and the state-level—is to better the Congress on the small matter of fulfilling its promises to the people of India. That is the only way it can distinguish itself from the party it—and everyone else, it would seem—loves to hate.

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 परोपकाराय फलन्ति वृक्षा: परोपकाराय वहन्ति नद्यः।

 परोपकाराय दुहन्ति गावः परोपकाराय इदं शरीरम्।।

            

 

 

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