Narendra Modi has to stop the rot before AAP wave hits India.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: It’s champagne time for the party that took birth just three years back. Jubilations and celebrations had lit up the clear February night sky with fire crackers.
Yes, we are talking about the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose victory in Delhi assembly polls is yet to see a parallel in recent memory, in India.
The party stretched everyone’s expectations, breaking the levels set even by the exit polls which had already given a clear majority for India’s newest party. Result after result that began pouring in Tuesday gave a thumbs–up to the muffler man with his trade-mark cough—Arvind Kejriwal. In, all, AAP bagged 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly. The BJP got 3 seats, despite their strategic planning via Amit shah and prime minister Narendra Modi. The Congress Party was decimated.
A BJP spokesman said the Assembly election was a local poll and in no way reflected the party’s strength in the rest of the country.
“This is not a referendum on the central government,” said GVL Narasimha Rao.
But a loss in Delhi certainly warrants an introspection for Modi and the BJP. It also signals an end to their honeymoon days.
It must be recalled that AAP has risen from the ashes, like the proverbial phoenix, after last year’s oblivion, post the fiasco when Kejriwal stepped down after 49-days in office over the passage of the Jan Lok Pal Bill. Today, coming out of this existential crisis, AAP is standing the tallest in Delhi.
The question to be asked if, what went wrong for the BJP, despite Modi throwing bit too, to elevate the battle for Delhi to new heights? Here are some reasons:
1.) The weary citizen of Delhi, be it a top-notch bureaucrat or the urban slum dweller, had been craving for a semblance of stability and a corruption free environment. But then what they got instead were (as media reports here have said ) a slew of irrelevant and outdated issues emanating from the BJP’s Hindu hardline factions – Love Jihad, Ghar-Wapsi, prescriptions for Hindu women to bear more children to name a few.
2.) There were communal flare-ups in the sensitive zones of the capital– Trilokpuri, Bawana, Nangloi, Nand Nagiri and Okhla. Also, the violence spilled over to the hitherto untouched zones – like the churches in the capital which were vandalized and burnt despite the so called police protection that has been assigned to these places of worship used by a small but well-knit Christian community in the capital. “What will it take for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out about the mounting violence against India’s religious minorities?” asked The New York Times on Saturday in an editorial titled “Modi’s Dangerous Silence”.
“Attacks at Christian places of worship have prompted no response from the man elected to represent and to protect all of India’s citizens,” said the influential daily. “Nor has he addressed the mass conversion to Hinduism of Christians and Muslims who have been coerced or promised money,” it said. “Modi’s continued silence before such troubling intolerance increasingly gives the impression that he either cannot or does not wish to control the fringe elements of the Hindu nationalist right,” it added.
3.) Praises were showered on Nathuram Godse, the man who shot and killed Mahatma Gandhi followed by Modi’s praise and admiration of the Mahatma. October 2nd, a national holiday, marking the birthday of the Mahatma, was the day now chosen by the Modi government for cleaning offices, which meant that the office-goers had to forego the holiday and come to office to participate in the cleansing drive.
4.) All this surely confused the people who had elected Modi for his traits of being a decisive, no-nonsense leader whose government also saw history text-books being revised, introduction of Sanskrit and extolling ancient India’s achievements of practicing plastic surgery and even flying an aircraft.
5.) To choose Christmas day to propagate good governance day also did not go down well with the people of Delhi which has a large population working in government offices.
6.) And finally, the BJP’s style of campaigning was a far cry from the more sophisticated, multi-media driven issue based agenda. The BJP resorted to lot of mud-slinging against AAP and its leader Kejriwal, calling him badnaseeb (unlucky), Naxalite, anarchist, a 49-day disaster who quit the government last year, because he would have been otherwise lynched.
7.) Smacking of desperation, the BJP accused AAP of receiving donations whereas the stark reality has been the common man’s party was struggling to advertise in leading newspapers because costs were prohibitive. I did happen to see in Manish Sisodia’s office in east Delhi how the former journalist put down a request for a full page advertisement just because it was far too expensive.
Conclusions: While AAP focused on the slum clusters, Muslims, workers and marginalized groups, besides pitching in to woo the middle-class localities, they were also all over the TV newsrooms in debates, arguments and clarifications. The BJP was busy mudslinging and wasted time in character assassinations.
It must be remembered that the political process is changing rather drastically today. There is the rise of the independent minded voter who is selfish and focused on his needs—soon to become the decisive factor in future elections.
Kejriwal on his part was focused on beaming his poll strategy around the issues that the majority of the people faced—the rising electricity and water bills, safety and security of women, rampant corruption in all strata of governance to name a few.
“This is BJP’s defeat and also Modi’s. Because when he campaigned for the Lok Sabha polls, he sold a dream of Achhe Din (Good Days) to the voters. Many of us fell for that promise. However, in last eight months since he became the Prime Minister he has gone back on many promises including the promise of reining in the corruption, bringing back the black money. This had led to the party and Modi losing their credibility which is seen in today’s result,” said veteran activist Anna Hazare, from whose civil rights movement Kejriwal was baptized once upon a time.
Put simply, no one needs a riot when there are jobs to be done and bills to be paid—and Kejriwal and his party did focus just on this to eventually romp home as victors.
(Rajiv Theodore is India Bureau Chief, The American Bazaar)