BJP is inadequate, Narendra Modi is not

Last Saturday, with just a day to go before voting in Karnataka began, a senior journalist with pronounced Left inclinations, tweeted photo images of the front pages of some dailies in the state. They showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah requesting a vote for the party. What the tweet left out—wittingly or otherwise—was the equally prominent photograph of the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa. It is to the credit of the journalist that when this lapse was pointed out, he quickly admitted his error and promised to be more careful in future.

Maybe it was an honest mistake by the journalist who has absolutely no love for the BJP. Somehow I don’t think so. For the past fortnight, particularly after the Prime Minister stepped up his campaign in Karnataka and drew large enthusiastic crowds, as did Amit Shah, there has been an attempt to suggest that the BJP has wrung out all local initiative from a state Assembly election and sought to convert it into a Modi election. Congress President alluded to that tangentially at his press conference last Thursday in Bengaluru when he argued that this was not an election about him or Modi but about Karnataka.

In his own way, the doughty Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has also been steadfast in arguing that the election in Karnataka will not be settled by campaigners from the North—he was alluding to Modi, Shah and Yogi Adityanath—but will be a contest between Yeddyurappa and him. Siddramaiah has also tried very hard to give a distinctly Kannada flavour to the elections, even at the risk of being dubbed regionalist. He seems to have taken a leaf from Modi who, during his stint as Chief Minister of Gujarat, always made Gujarati pride an important sub-text of his campaigns in 2002 and 2007. There is also the example of Nitish Kumar’s successful 2015 campaign that posited Bihari versus Bahari.

When votes in the EVMs are tabulated on May 15, we will know to what extent Siddaramaiah has been successful in steering the narrative away from the personalities of both the Prime Minister and his own party President. Whatever the outcome, this is unlikely to have any bearing on the last round of Assembly elections before the 2019 general election. In Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the BJP has very established regional leaders in the form of incumbent Chief Ministers. Modi’s campaigns there, while complementing the appeal of local leaders, won’t necessarily distract from the fact that these are, at the end of the day, state Assembly elections.

However, the larger issue remains. It is undeniable that since 2014, the BJP has been banking disproportionately on the Prime Minister’s campaign to galvanise its workers and create a late surge in favour of the party. Anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable but they suggest that a fortnight ago, the Congress and BJP were equally poised (some say Congress had a nominal edge) and that Modi’s energetic campaign has decisively tilted the balance in favour of the BJP. If this is indeed the case, it would be a replica of how the campaign shaped up in both Uttar Pradesh and even Tripura.

In any case, for the BJP, it marks a significant change. I was in Karnataka in 2008 for a fortnight assisting the BJP campaign. At that time, the campaign focussed entirely on local leaders and the spotlight was always on Yeddyurappa. National campaigners such as L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj and even Modi provided star appeal to the campaign. They didn’t distract from the fact that Karnataka was witnessing a battle between three chief ministerial candiates—S M Krishna, Yeddyurappa and H D Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular). Today, the high point of the BJP campaign is the presence of Modi. The others, it would seem, play a supporting role.

There is no pre-determined formula that applies to elections. In the 1970s, particularly during the clutch of state Assembly elections in 1972 and 1980, the Congress campaigns were centred entirely on Indira Gandhi who had emerged as a larger-than-life leader. This was certainly not the case in the Assembly elections in 1969 (when Indira Gandhi was still struggling to make a mark) and 1977 (when she was a discredited figure). Indeed, apart from Indira Gandhi and Modi, no other national leader has been a decisive factor in Assembly elections.

Yet there is an important difference. Indira Gandhi used to insist that the states should align themselves politically with the Centre to get the fruits of development. Modi on the other hand stresses cooperative federalism and focusses almost entirely on two themes: the achievements of the Central government in Delhi and the perfidy of the Congress. Modi is a cult figure with a strong youth following while Indira was venerated by her supporters who tended to be from the poorest sections of the population. The campaigning styles reflect their core fan base. Rahul on the other hand has not yet been able to secure a defined constituency. He enjoys greater support among the media, anti-Modi intellectuals and a slice of the upper-middle classes, and these sections are not politically consequential.

All the anecdotal evidence from Karnataka indicates that the Prime Minister enjoys considerable goodwill among voters, including those who are inclined to give Siddaramaiah another chance. Those who have toured Rajasthan, where the BJP faces a formidable challenge from the Congress, say that voters are also inclined to make a distinction between the shortcomings of the BJP state government and Modi. Even if the local BJP is deemed inadequate, the praise for Modi is unblemished.

What this suggests is that the more the general election of 2019 becomes a Modi versus Rahul presidential contest, the greater will be the likelihood of India experiencing political stability until 2024 at least.

Siddramaiah has tried very hard to give a distinctly Kannada flavour to the elections, even at the risk of being dubbed regionalist. He seems to have taken a leaf from Modi who, during his stint as Chief Minister of Gujarat, always made Gujarati pride an important subtext of his campaigns in 2002 and 2007. There is also the example of Nitish Kumar’s successful 2015 campaign that posited Bihari versus Bahari.

The writer is a senior journalist and Member of Parliament,