Modi becomes BJP ’s dilemma

The underlying assumption in this high risk g amble is that Gujarat CM’s persona will get them a high percentage of seats that would offset the disadvantage it would incur by not getting into pre-poll alliances

It is easy to understand the BJP’s plight. The rupee is falling, and there is a palpable anti-Congress mood. The generation next leader from the Congress party -Rahul Gandhi -- is yet to make the kind of impression that would make him look like a certain winner in the 2014 elections. In short, this is a situation that is tailor-made for the party to go full steam against the Congress. It has taken the first step by appointing the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the chairman of the party’s national campaign committee. By all rational expectations, after this Modi’s anointment as the party’s prime ministerial candidate should have been the next step. But then, the BJP has not taken this final step.

All kinds of arguments are heard within the BJP’s corridors of power. There are various hush-hush conspiracy theories that are also floated. Every trifling move is minutely dissected from the Modi standpoint. Amidst all this, there is one single fact that emerges without any dispute. The RSS -- the BJP’s parent organization - - is of the firm belief that Modi is the best bet for the BJP in the next elections, and all the leaders have accepted this belief, whatever their personal reservations may be. It is this unequivocal acceptance that gives birth to the Modi dilemma that now haunts the party.

The party has to face assembly elections in four north Indian states -- Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. As of today, it rules Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and pundits and pollsters alike rate its chances of retaining these twin states rather high. Similarly, the sitting Chief Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh have high ratings in their respective states. Not so long ago, Chouhan had got a pat from the senior leader L K Advani for his good governance. So, should the party bank on Chouhan to pull out a hat-trick or deploy its poster boy Narendra Modi. It is not an easy question to answer. Banking on Chouhan has the implied negation of Modi’s star value as the national campaigner, and drafting the latter could mean a shift from the state issues where the BJP has done well to the national issues. Clearly, the local unit prefers the first approach and thus Modi was nowhere in the party’s campaign that has been launched.

But then a course correction seems to have been ordered, and after a few days, Modi’s face was brought in the campaign. If this is the practical side of the problem, there is another dimension to it. One of the elements of Modi’s claim to being a prime ministerial candidate is his track record of winning the state elections thrice. So, if the BJP waits to anoint him till after the November 2103 elections, then the space could become crowded. There would be three such persons with similar credentials -- Modi, Shivraj and Raman. This would make for intense competition in an already crowded arena. The alternative scenario is more than dreadful. Should the BJP anoint Modi and then lose any of these two states, then he would certainly have the advantage of belonging to a rare category, but the party’s 2014 challenge would be weaker. Moreover Modi would suffer a setback as the national campaigner.

India does not have an American style presidential election. It appears that it is a person-to-person contest, but when the elections results are finally counted that is also an aggregate of the outcome of the states. But by projecting Modi and banking upon him to deliver a victory, the BJP is intent on transforming the Lok Sabha election, which currently is an aggregate of the different state elections to one-man referendum. It wants to argue that candidate does not matter in the elections. For them in all the Lok Sabha constituencies, Modi is the de facto candidate, and the actual candidate is just a surrogate for him. This situation did prevail with respect to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the first few elections, when the legend has it that even a lamp post could win an election as Nehru’s/Congress’ candidate. But subsequently as the democracy matured it emerged the Indian voter has not accepted this form of electoral democracy.

This has been proved by the fact that the regional parties are growing powerful. These parties have not only bagged state assemblies but registered substantial successes in the Lok Sabha elections, to make them players whose might has to reckoned with while forming a government. It is a truism in an era of coalition politics, that the unitary bias of our federal constitutional structure has to shed its weight in favour of state satraps. The NDA era saw the disproportionate clout exercised by the TDP leader Chandra Babu Naidu, and the UPA was hostage to the tantrums of Mamata Bannerjee. It is also clear that in a yet uncooked deal, Nitish is being wooed by the UPA through a change of norms for assisting special status states. Even Modi banks on the AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa, and we can be sure that she would also extract a political price.

However insofar as Modi is concerned, the die has been cast. With whatever assets and liabilities he can bring to the electoral battleground, he has moved to the central arena, and he has not only be at the firing line, but also within the line of fire. Both the quality of his attack and the strength of his defence would be tested.

It is still quite a long distance for the battle for 2014 to begin in right earnest. Clearly, there is the matter of the state assembly elections in November 2013, and there is the issue of pre-poll alliances. The BJP seems to have almost foreclosed its options by banking on Modi, and this is a route it has taken full knowledge of its pros and cons. The underlying assumption in this high risk gamble is that Modi’s persona will get them a high percentage of seats that would offset the disadvantage it would incur by not getting into pre-poll alliances. To live with this disadvantage is also a part of the BJP’s Modi dilemma.