Modi-Shah duo

With Kirodi Lal Meena’s Resignation, Rajasthan BJP’s Last Stalwart in Modi-Shah Era Steps Back

A leader as big as Meena stepping back doesn’t come as a surprise, as several other bigwigs of the Rajasthan BJP have met a similar fate in recent times.

Jaipur: Not many politicians in Rajasthan have a career in electoral politics that could remotely match that of Kirodi Lal Meena – one of the BJP’s tallest tribal leaders in the desert state.

Meena has the distinction of being a six-time MLA and a three-term MP from different constituencies of three districts in eastern Rajasthan – Dausa, Sawai Madhopur and Karauli – winning on a BJP ticket, as an independent and even as a candidate of the National People’s Party (NPP), which he once led in Rajasthan and helped it win four assembly seats in the largely bipolar state, where there is little space for a third force.

The 72-year-old Meena, who was minister for agriculture, horticulture and rural development in the Bhajanlal Sharma-led BJP government in Rajasthan, confirmed on Thursday (July 4) that he had resigned from the state cabinet.

“I have been working in ten to 12 districts, from where I was also once an independent MP, and I have strong influence. But I couldn’t make my party win even in those regions and this has soured my mind. I had announced before that if I was not able to help the party win the Lok Sabha seats, especially those of Sawai Madhopur, Karauli and Dausa, I would resign from the ministerial post,” Meena, who is an MLA from the Sawai Madhopur constituency, had told reporters on Thursday.

In the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had performed poorly in eastern Rajasthan, losing the Bharatpur, Dausa, Karauli-Dholpur and Tonk-Sawai Madhopur seats.

He said he had resigned on May 5 and had met chief minister Sharma, who asked him not to resign.

“I am neither angry with the honourable chief minister nor the organisation. I don’t have any desire for any post. I resigned because I had already made the announcement and am just keeping my word,” said Meena.

Later on Friday (July 5), Meena met BJP president J.P. Nadda after the latter called him to Delhi. Meena told reporters he was asked to meet Nadda again after ten days.

While Meena maintained in the public that he held no grudges against his party leaders, for those who have followed the trajectory of the septuagenarian’s politics, the move doesn’t come as a surprise.

One of the most active leaders of the saffron party in the state who is known as a ‘street fighter’ for his knack of spearheading protests and dharnas, Meena was among the last leaders of the Rajasthan BJP with a spunk of his own to attract voters and a large support base that transcended regions.

Prior to his resignation, Meena was an oddity in the Rajasthan cabinet, where barring a handful, most members are first-time ministers, with none of them nearly as influential as him.

A leader as big as Meena stepping back doesn’t come as a surprise, as several other bigwigs of the Rajasthan BJP have met a similar fate in recent times, when the saffron party in the era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah has systematically replaced leaders having a mass following with relatively unknown faces in several states.

Voice of opposition during Congress regime even without official post

In Rajasthan, which has a tribal population of 13.48%, Meena has been an asset to the BJP with his massive following among the community. The Meena community is the most dominant castes among scheduled tribes in Rajasthan and holds sway over multiple assembly and Lok Sabha seats.

One of the reasons why Meena is important for the BJP is that he is a staunch believer in the Hindutva ideology of the RSS and has always opposed the alternate view that tribals don’t come under the Hindu fold.

At a time when the Bharat Adivasi Party has emerged as a formidable force in southern Rajasthan, with the party’s leaders reiterating multiple times that Adivasis are not Hindu, Meena has been propagating exactly the opposite idea.

Also read | Bharat Adivasi Party: Battling BJP’s Hindutva, One Election at a Time

Known as ‘Baba’ among his followers, during the last five years of Congress rule in the state, Meena had emerged as the most vocal opposition leader, despite the fact that he didn’t hold any post in the BJP organisation and was a Rajya Sabha MP at the time.

His continuous protests and dharnas against issues such as question paper leaks and compensation for the families of soldiers killed in the Pulwama attack contributed in building a narrative against Congress.

However, after the BJP came to power, Meena ended up drifting away from the limelight. Even though he was made a cabinet minister, the fact that he was given the rural development portfolio while the panchayati raj department was entrusted with another minister, Madan Dilawar, had raised eyebrows.

Generally, the panchayati raj and rural development portfolios are held by one minister due to the related nature of the two departments.

Even though he is known for his outspoken nature, Meena refrained from speaking his mind in the press and would often be seen putting a finger on his lips and smiling in response to media questions.

Raje to Meena, shrinking space for mass leaders in Modi-Shah era

Two-time Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje and Meena are not known to see eye-to-eye. After serving as a minister in the first term of the Raje government between 2003 and 2008, Meena had left the BJP due to his growing differences with the then-chief minister.

Later, he contested and won elections, including the 2009 Lok Sabha elections from Dausa as an independent candidate. He also brought the little-known NPP founded by P.A. Sangma to Rajasthan, and owing to the groundswell of support for him, managed to make it win four seats in the state assembly.

Later in 2018, he was brought back to the BJP prior to the state elections, which the saffron party had lost to the Congress.

More than five years later, despite wielding immense influence over the state’s politics, both Meena and Raje are no longer in the forefront of the Rajasthan BJP in the Modi-Shah era.

The BJP central leadership didn’t consider Raje for the post of the chief minister and instead gave the post to first-time MLA Bhajanlal Sharma.

Many senior leaders who had previously served as ministers in past Raje governments were also replaced with fresh faces.

With Meena’s exit from the cabinet, the transition of the BJP in Rajasthan towards becoming a unit devoid of any mass leaders who could possibly present a contrarian opinion compared to that of the central leadership, is complete.

Amit Shah’s Politics Has Always Thrived on Hindu-Muslim Divisions

As mover of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the Union home minister is being accused of anti-Muslim bias. But as Rajdeep Sardesai chronicles, Shah has never believed in keeping his views on Muslims hidden.

Extracted with permission from chapter 2 of Rajdeep Sardesai’s 2019: How Modi Won India (HarperCollins, 2019).

Long before he became national BJP president and was hailed as a modern-day Chanakya, Amit Shah was better known as the political strongman of Sarkhej, a sprawling constituency on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Shah, or Amitbhai as he is often referred to, had represented Sarkhej as an MLA since 1997 and was virtually unbeatable on his home turf. In 2007, when the Congress put up Shashikant Patel, a relatively powerful candidate, against him, Shah reportedly used his clout in the state government as home minister to re-activate old cases that had been filed by the police against Patel. Local real estate dealers were warned not to offer their premises to the Congressman to set up a temporary party office. ‘Shah was going to win in any case since Sarkhej is a BJP bastion but he just wanted to eliminate all competition,’ recalls an Ahmedabad-based journalist. Shah would defeat Patel by more than 2.35 lakh votes.

Also Read: Partition Lies and Amit Shah’s Theatre of the Absurd

Senior Gujarat journalist Rajiv Shah tells a story that perhaps best epitomizes the darker aspects of the Amit Shah persona. In mid-March 2002, barely weeks after the communal riots in which more than a thousand people lost their lives, Rajiv bumped into Shah as he was coming out of the chief minister’s office in Gandhinagar. Concerned about the spiraling violence, Rajiv opened up an informal conversation. ‘Why don’t you take the initiative to bring the communities together in Ahmedabad, especially in your Sarkhej constituency?’ he asked Shah.

Rajdeep Sardesai
2019: How Modi Won India
HarperCollins, 2019

Sarkhej has a large Muslim population, most of which lives in the ghetto-like suburb of Juhapura. A series of mini-riots over the years had created an informal ‘border’ between the Hindu and Muslim dominated areas in the constituency. ‘Why are you so concerned over the rioting?’ was Shah’s sharp response. Rajiv was surprised by the reaction from the public representative but then explained that he had an apartment in Sarkhej and was anxious as violence still simmered in the region. ‘If you take the initiative and bring Hindu and Muslim leaders on one platform, I am sure the area will become tension-free,’ suggested Rajiv. Shah smiled knowingly and replied: ‘Which side of Sarkhej is your house situated, ours or theirs?’ When a mystified Rajiv gave the location, Shah responded instantly: ‘Don’t worry then, nothing will happen to your home. Whatever incidents take place, they will occur on the other side of the border.’

Rajiv was stunned by the insensitivity of the answer. ‘Here was my legislator, openly referring to the Hindu–Muslim divide in his area as if only one side has to be worried if there is a riot.’ And yet, for his many supporters in Sarkhej, Shah’s blunt answer would probably have been worthy of applause. The Gujarati Hindu middle class in Ahmedabad often refers to the religious divide in the city as one mirroring the ‘Indo-Pak border’; in several localities the two communities co-exist on either side of a mutually respected invisible ‘border’ that neither Hindus nor Muslims venture beyond. With his candid, if tactless reaction, Shah was only reflecting a mindset in which the concerns of only one community really mattered in Ahmedabad’s communally surcharged politics. A politically correct neta might have been more cautious before expressing his controversial views, but Amit Shah has always worn his Hindu majoritarian outlook as a badge of pride.

I recall being seated at a lunch with Shah once. As I took my chair, Shah looked at me and grinned, ‘Ah, toh aaj anti-Hindu, communist log bhee hamare saath baith gaye hai!’ (It looks like anti-Hindu, communist people are also sitting with us.) I contested the description: as a journalist, I am sceptical of the politics of both left and right. For the next few minutes, we engaged in a heated discussion over ‘secularism’, at the end of which Shah looked at me disapprovingly. ‘Thoda aap secular log Hindu dharma pe kitaab padha karo, yeh angrezi kitaab mein kuch rakha nahi hai!’ (You secular people should start reading books on Hindu dharma, instead of English books.) Caricaturing secular, liberal Indians as English-speaking elitists is a commonly held fetish in the Sangh Parivar.

It is this combative, controversial personality who was chosen as the president of the BJP in July 2014, within months of the party’s path-breaking Lok Sabha triumph. Key to that victory had been the BJP’s remarkable sweep in Uttar Pradesh where the party and its allies won as many as 73 of the 80 seats, firmly establishing Shah’s reputation as a masterful election organizer. But he was also, at the time, a suspect out on bail who had spent three months in jail after being charged with directing extra-judicial killings in Gujarat as minister of state for home. Within the BJP and RSS, Shah’s appointment as president sparked off murmurs of a ‘Gujarati takeover’ although no one was willing to challenge it publicly. Had Prime Minister Narendra Modi taken a big gamble then by choosing his fellow-traveller from Gujarat to head the party?

Also Read: The Fear Factor: Fact-Checking Amit Shah’s Response to Industrialist Rahul Bajaj

When I first heard of Shah’s appointment as Modi’s right hand my mind went back to an interview I had done with Modi in September 2012 when he was Gujarat chief minister. It was just a few weeks after Shah’s bail conditions had been relaxed by the Supreme Court and he was allowed to return to Gujarat after spending almost two years outside his home state. Earlier, the apex court had barred Shah from residing in the state for fear that he might interfere in the investigations into the role of the Gujarat police in the alleged fake encounters. Among the many questions I posed to Modi was one on Shah’s immediate political future. The Gujarat elections were scheduled for December 2012 and there was uncertainty over whether a leader out on bail would be given a ticket. ‘So, will Amit Shah be contesting the elections? What happens to the case against him?’ I asked Modi. The interview, where I was made to sit on the floor of the bus Modi was travelling in and forced to look up at him sitting above me while we spoke had been a testy encounter and that question was perhaps the last straw. ‘Law will take its own course,’ was Modi’s curt response.

Narendra Modi (left) and Amit Shah (right). Photo: PTI

The next day as we were preparing to air the interview, I got a call from the chief minister’s office; Modi himself was on the line. ‘Can you please edit out the portion where I have spoken on Amitbhai’s case?’ was the urgent request. In the many years that I had known and interviewed the BJP leader, this was the first time he was asking me to remove something he had said on camera. I was a little surprised but reluctantly agreed to edit out the remark on Shah in an attempt to ensure our fraught personal relationship did not deteriorate further. When I related this incident to a long-time political-watcher in Gujarat, he offered an explanation for Modi’s seeming defensiveness: ‘Please understand, Modi owes Shah a great deal. When Shah was in jail, the CBI tried to extract a confession out of him to somehow implicate Modi in the murder case in which he was charged. The agency even promised to let him off if he turned approver. Shah refused and from that day onwards, Modi remains obligated to Shah. Now, they are an unshakeable jodi, one soul in two bodies!’

Rajdeep Sardesai is an author and TV news presenter.

The Diminishing Returns of Modi-Shah’s Masterstrokes

The routine of sudden, shock moves that take everyone by surprise has not only become predictable, but also frayed.

It is almost a formula now – a sudden, shock move that takes everyone by surprise and completely changes the scenario. This is the Modi-Shah style, from demonetisation to Kashmir to so many political manoeuvres which have caught the opposition flat-footed, in states as far as Assam and Goa.

After every such action, the praise singers, whose job is to compose and sing ballads hailing the chief, express their admiration on social media, on television channels and in the newspapers—masterstroke, surgical strike and, of course, Chanakya, the epithet for Amit Shah, now being mentioned in the same breath as Narendra Modi. The hyperbole is overwhelming but has also become somewhat repetitive and predictable; but look closely, and it is also looking frayed.

Maharashtra was to be another of those swift operations. The manner in which the swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis in the early hours of November 23, was choreographed had all the hallmarks of the shrewd political strategists of Delhi, in short, Modi and Shah. Not just the front composed of Shiv Sena, NCP and the Congress, which was all set to stake its claim the same day, but also the general public was left agape when the news broke on social media. Modi and Shah had struck again. There was some unease even among ‘neutral’ observers, who otherwise have a grudging admiration for the BJP’s political adroitness.

Also Read: BJP, Serial Betrayer of Allies, Has Got a Taste of Its Own Medicine in Maharashtra

Getting the Indian system to move at any time is a difficult task—it is slow, ponderous and process-driven, which can be frustrating but, seen holistically, also designed to curb over-enthusiasm. Yet, as this duo has shown, these processes can be short-circuited whenever needed and this time round, each step was speeded up to ensure that the objective was met: Devendra Fadnavis had to be sworn in before the other parties reacted, nay, even woke up.

President’s rule was revoked by the governor at 5:47 am and the swearing in began at 7:50 am, and at 8:40 am, Modi had tweeted his congratulations. A few hours before, the need for cabinet approval was bypassed by invoking a special provision of the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, which gives the prime minister special power. President Ram Nath Kovind signed the proclamation which was sent to the governor. All this was done overnight to enable the swearing-in at that early hour.

It couldn’t have happened without Modi and Shah’s involvement, consent and blessings. In the end, though, Fadnavis took the fall by saying it was all done at the state level, as if he could sway the president and the prime minister, leave alone the governor.

Narendra Modi (left) and Amit Shah (right). Credit: PTI

Ring-fenced from criticism

Had the operation been successful, Modi and Shah would have been hailed for pulling off another great feat. Their earlier ‘masterstrokes’ have been commended by not just their hardcore followers but also their fans in the media. This time around, initially there was some jubilation among the bhakts – he was once again hailed as Chanakya for pulling off the brazen subversion of constitutional norms. But as it became clear that the operation was doomed, there was silence, and the names of Modi and Shah disappeared from any references to the goings-on in Maharashtra. No fingers were pointed at them and nor did they make any public comment.

Modi and Shah, it appears, are always ring-fenced from direct criticism by their followers – successes belong solely to them, failures are everybody else’s fault. Not surprisingly, therefore, after the Supreme Court’s order to hold a transparent floor test in the assembly, Fadnavis had to speak to the press and take the blame.

Also Read: One Battle Won But Several Others Remain for ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ in Maharashtra

The entire surreptitious drama of getting all the paperwork done to push through the swearing-in at dawn came to nought – the putative masterstroke had failed. This is one more example of how the efficacy of these masterstrokes is declining. On the political front, many of the stunts that the BJP, under Modi and Shah, has pulled off, are now unravelling. Allies everywhere, brought over to the BJP via a variety of means and incentives, are feeling disgruntled after realising that they are not equal to the big brother.

Other big bang events too have failed, whether the leaders and their followers admit or not. The formula is just not working any more, not the least because there was no plan beyond the first step.

Demonetisation, NRC and Kashmir

Let’s talk about demonetisation. Whatever the reasons – and a new one was trotted out on a daily basis – it has turned out to be a disaster. In those heady early days of the Modi regime, his aura was not yet undiminished and even learned economists welcomed the move rapturously. Today, they may be silent, perhaps too embarrassed to acknowledge they were wrong, but the devastating effects of that one thoughtless action are there for everyone to see. It did not just harm the economy – it was an inhumane act that caused misery to millions. And even the simplest effect it was supposed to have – removing black money from the system – did not pan out.

The same with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), first rolled out in Assam with the stated objective of rooting out ‘foreigners’. Though not announced in such stark terms, it was to turn large numbers of Muslims into non-citizens. But it spectacularly backfired when the final list of 19 lakhs had many Hindus in it too. Now the BJP’s own government in the state is objecting to it.

Activists of the Hindu Yuba-Chattra Parishad burn copies of NRC list in Guwahati on August 31, after it was revealed that a large number of Bengali Hindus were left out. Photo: PTI

Modi 2.0, in which Amit Shah has a bigger official role as the home minister, started with a bang with the dilution of Article 370, which guaranteed Kashmir a special status. The manner in which it was done – while Kashmir was under President’s rule – makes it very dubious. It was totally in keeping with the Modi-Shah template—without consultation and without consideration to how it will affect ordinary citizens. They like to appear tough and resolute and they locked up everybody, Kashmiris and also the state’s leadership.

As news about hardship and repression in Kashmir began coming out, it became clear that life in Kashmir was anything but ‘normal’, as the official version had it. The government’s narrative quickly slipped out of its hands. A video of Ajit Doval enjoying street food looked so staged that no one believed it. Intrepid journalists found their way in and came back with heartrending stories about life in Kashmir; soon, Kashmiri journalists, long used to working under threats and pressure from the establishment and the militants, began sending despatches.

When the international media began its coverage, the world got to know that the government’s moves in Kashmir were nothing less than house arrest of an entire people. It was terrible publicity, not for the Modi government, but for India, because the respect everyone had for this country was because of its commitment to democracy and diversity.

Bungled once again

The master planners had bungled once again. Like in many other situations, this government had no blueprint, no plan, no next steps like in other cases. The idea is to announce a big decision and then scramble to manage the fallout as things go along, in the jugaad style in which we Indians take so much pride.

With a burgeoning image problem worldwide – the Congressional hearings in Washington were scathing – the Modi government had to bank on a shady NGO to bring over ultra-right Members of European Parliament for a tour to show them how peaceful Kashmir was. No one was convinced. Amit Shah’s ‘masterstroke’ of doing away with Article 370, that was greeted all over India when the headlines broke, has turned out to be yet another catastrophe at the cost of millions of Indians.

Also Read: Shrinking Saffron: How India’s Political Map Has Changed in the Past 18 Months

Maharashtra falls into that bracket of ill-thought-out plans with little follow-up planning. So desperate were the BJP bosses to capture the richest state and so averse to the idea of letting anyone else form the government, that they bent every rule and subverted every convention to get their way. But, in their desperation and urgency, they did not do the diligence of checking if Ajit Pawar actually had the numbers. Sharad Pawar of course gets the credit for thwarting Modi and Shah, but they have really been done in by their own over-smartness. They couldn’t see their way out of the tangled web they had woven.

Demonetisation, the NRC and the Kashmir decision have caused untold misery to millions. The whimsical and secretive way decisions are taken has real and brutal consequences. They cannot be laughed off, however much anyone may want to relish the prospect of egg on the establishment’s face.

People gather at the entry gate of a bank to exchange and deposit their old high denomination banknotes in Jammu, India November 15, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Mukesh Gupta

But will it stop?

More worrying is that such capricious decision making is not likely to stop—this is what they know and prefer. They have no time for consultation, sagacity or patience. Shock and awe is not just the preferred method, it is the only one. Rolling out the NRC on a national level is now on the cards—clearly the Modi government has not learnt its lessons from Assam.

Also Read: Nationwide NRC: Here’s a List of Documents You May Have to Furnish if Assam is the Model

But, it is becoming more evident that the government is facing resistance and pushbacks. From the students of JNU, to Mamata Bannerjee in West Bengal and now Maharashtra, where the voters – and the Pawar-Thackeray combine – have stopped the BJP juggernaut show that people are not going to just accept whatever is thrown at them.

Even those who have been diehard supporters of the party and had hopes that Modi would change things for the better, such as businessmen, both small and big, are now wondering if the government has something more substantial to offer than just headline-making events. The economy is in shambles, growth has slowed down alarmingly, jobs are being lost and no foreign investment seems to be on the horizon. These are real problems that a government is expected to solve but it appears clueless—hence the need for masterstrokes. But that formula has no steam left in it anymore.

As State Elections Loom, Congress Is Learning the Value of Keeping Its Flock Together

There have been very few defections from the Congress this time, especially in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, which could mean that leaders there do not perceive a significantly bleak future for the Congress for now.

Raipur: BJP president Amit Shah has a very clear head for realpolitik. It was revealed in one of the Manthan sessions he had with Chhattisgarh party office bearers recently. He is believed to have advised the local unit to become more accommodating of leaders who come from other parties, especially the Congress, as the ultimate aim is to finish opposition off forever – either by absorbing them or by crushing them.

“The Congress is alive only in states where the BJP is the principal party. Look at MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka or Maharashtra. It feeds off the BJP. In all other states like UP, Bihar, southern states, Bengal, etc., regional parties have absorbed Congressmen who realised that they were on a sinking ship,” he told an awed audience. The thrust of his argument is that the rise of regional aspirations has meant that people do not find the Congress alone capable of addressing it anymore. It first happened in Tamil Nadu, then spread to Andhra, etc., but the real desertion from the Congress became a deluge just before and following the Mandal Commission implementation in late 1980s, when entire swathes of aspirational OBCs and Dalits in UP and Bihar went with the RJD, the BSP and the SP.

Also read: Chhattisgarh: Is Political Change Possible If Parties Keep Fielding the Same Candidates?

Most importantly, he told his audience that the Muslims will remain with the Congress where possible but will join any regional combination which they think will look after their interests or is likely to win, even if temporarily. The TMC in Bengal is an example as is the AIUDF in Assam. This has meant further erosion of the Congress base. The regionalisation suits the BJP as it has the organisation to project itself as the only national party with the interest of the majority in mind. He pointed out that the socialist leaders who held sway during the 1960s and the 1970s have more or less made peace and joined the BJP in most places.

The context established, he came to the real point of his argument. “The party has remained cadre-based for far too long, and that has been one of the difficulties in absorbing leaders who have a good following independently as the established units have failed to respond to ‘outsiders’. Where we have been in power, we have also failed to crush the Congress leaders who were perceived as corrupt. We have not taken up their cases and they have gotten off lightly,” he is believed to have said. Leaders like V.C. Shukla and Arvind Netam, who had risen to national prominence, had joined the BJP with their supporters but were not made very comfortable, resulting in their returning to the Congress.

Shah’s strong-arm theory of politics has been useful in elections like the recent one in Gujarat, where it managed to quell a rising opposition to the BJP.

A lot has changed since then. After the advent of Modi-Shah, several Congress leaders – from Jagdimbika Pal and Rita Bahuguna in UP to Narayan Rane in Maharashtra, Vishwajeet Rane in Goa to Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam and almost the entire Congress unit in Tripura, to cite only a few examples – have not only come into the BJP but have been absorbed and given important political positions and assignments.

Chhattisgarh may be going the Maharashtra-NCP way, and that may be to the BJP’s advantage. The emergence of Ajit Jogi-led Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) and its alliance with the BSP has meant that, for the first time, a cohesive regional party has emerged in the state which is laying claim to at least 20% of the votes. It is made up almost entirely of deserting, ambitious Congressmen. If it does well and the Congress does not win Chhattisgarh, then by the time next elections are held in 2024, JCC will be a force to reckon with and the Jogis may emerge in the footsteps of Pawar and Mamata with their own regional base and claims to at least 30% seats carved out of the Congress. This will naturally please the BJP.

The BJP appears to be at an added advantage in states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan where it has ruled more or less continuously for the past two decades or more. Anyone between the age of 15 and 35 is not likely to have seen any other chief minister or ruling party. For this generation to identify with the BJP is easier, especially in the face of an inert opposition like the Congress, which has shown singular lack of drive to unseat it. This generation is also free of post-Independence hardship stories. For the remaining, Shah’s strong-arm theory of politics has been useful in elections like the recent one in Gujarat, where it managed to quell a rising opposition to the BJP.

Also read: Congress Leaders in Chhattisgarh Have Been Painting a Rosy Picture for Rahul Gandhi

The lessons in history which the Modi-Shah duo dole out intermittently, wherein Nehru takes a fair share of blame for perceived lack of development since Independence, is also meant to influence a generation of voters who have little or no contact with the Congress of yore. Most people who end up defending the Congress or the pre-BJP history of the nation on social media, electronic media or public spaces, are well past forty. If they happen to be committed Congressmen, they are past fifty. That leaves a very wide impressionable field for the BJP, which hopes to continue targeting the youth and colouring their thought processes. The idea obviously extends to universities, local bodies and school education.

That would mean that most bases have been well covered by the BJP in the present round of elections. But surprisingly, there have been very few defections from the Congress this time, especially in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. It could only mean that leaders there do not perceive a significantly bleak future for the Congress for now. Unlike the North East, where a combination of mismanagement and anti-incumbency meant that the Congress has been washed out, it still has some time left in its last remaining bastions. But only if it is alert to what is happening around it. Otherwise, Shah will either pick or crush.

Neeraj Mishra has covered elections in central India for more than two decades.

To Challenge Modi, Rahul Gandhi Must First Put the Congress House in Order

It still remains to be seen whether the Gandhi scion can emerge as a formidable opponent to the ruling BJP and Prime Minister Modi.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Credit: Reuters

It’s not surprising that Rahul Gandhi will most likely be elevated to the position of Congress president next month. What, however, remains to be seen is whether he has the mettle to take on the challenge posed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and whether he can turn out to be an effective adversary to Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

As a political commentator put it, Rahul is a “child of entitlement”. He is set to inherit the family’s political legacy. Therefore, his elevation to the post of party chief comes as no surprise, much less as a shock. But doubt still hangs over his political acumen and ability.

Notwithstanding that Rahul is now making waves in poll-bound Gujarat, the question is whether the Gandhi scion has the dedication, determination and political depth to challenge Modi at the national level.

His party’s performance in the last Lok Sabha polls does not give much confidence in this regard. The Congress, as we are aware, performed abysmally in that critical election.

At the same time, much has changed in the political scenario since then. Politics has its own dynamic. The “aham brahmasmi (I am the creator)” style of working of the prime minister, as once described by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, is proving to be discomfiting for Modi, particularly in the wake of the demonetisation project and the flawed implementation of the Goods and Services Tax. These factors have contributed to making Rahul Modi’s prime challenger.

Interestingly, constant ridicule heaped on the Congress vice-president by the prime minister and BJP leaders, coupled with social media trolling by Modi bhakts have brought out the fighter in Rahul.

India is always known to opt for the middle path, steering clear of political extremes. In the history of independent India, no prime minister has ever humiliated to this extent (both subtly and not so subtly) his chief detractor. Never in the past did we hear the ruling party vowing to get rid of the main opposition party. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction is what the laws of physics say. With less than 18 months left for the next Lok Sabha polls, Rahul appears to be reaping its benefit.

In the last two months, Rahul has gone all out, aggressively attacking the ruling BJP. His visit to the US starting with the interaction at the Berkley University showed he was ready to shed his earlier diffidence.

But Modi is no pushover. He is the first BJP leader to have brought his party to power at the Centre with an absolute majority. There is no match for Modi’s oratorical skills. During BJP’s journey in the political wilderness, his guru L. K. Advani often talked about the need for a “killer instinct” to succeed in politics. His disciple has embraced that lesson – and in the process sidelined his guru.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with BJP chief Amit Shah. Credit: PTI

BJP chief Amit Shah presents a perfect foil to Modi. Shah’s booth-level management had done wonders for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. Determined to maintain his party’s upward electoral graph, Shah has declared his party’s aim to win 350 plus seats (out of a total of 543 in the Lok Sabha) in the next Lok Sabha polls.

Also read: Has Rahul Gandhi Changed or Are We Seeing Him Differently?

Modi’s emergence as a top national leader has been hailed as the elevation of a ‘chaiwala’ in an entrenched established and elite order. Rahul’s ascension within the Congress, on the other hand, is derided. Rahul is shown to be a slow and somewhat reluctant learner in the school of politics. Even after 13 long years of apprenticeship, the Gandhi scion is found wanting in leadership. His detractors have derisively dubbed him as the “permanently waiting Congress president.”

Some senior Congress leaders in private have complained about Sonia Gandhi’s “blind love” for her son. They have regretted that the grand old party has to suffer Rahul’s leadership, if only because of his mother’s reluctance to ask her son to make way for a more suitable candidate for the top party post. Yet, none of these leaders has gone public with their criticism. And that speaks volumes about the hold the first family has on the Congress. The family which has given the party five presidents, starting from Motilal Nehru to Sonia.

The serious reservations about Rahul’s leadership which had begun to be aired following the Congress’ debacle in 2014, further deepened after the party suffered a string of electoral defeats in subsequent assembly polls.

Notwithstanding loyalists’ claims to the country, hardly anything has been done to build up the Congress organisation in the last three years when Rahul led the party as vice president and Sonia voluntarily took a backseat to facilitate her son’s political grooming.

Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Credit: PTI

Over the last two decades, the Congress has passively watched its organisation break down in state after state. No doubt, organisational failure is where it is hurting the party most. It is a fact that though Sonia might have created a record by being at the helm of the party for nearly 20 years, these were also the years when the party organisation went to seed.

Her spin doctors may have tried to build a halo around Sonia, eulogising her ‘renunciantion’ of prime ministership when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power in May 2004. But Sonia could not become Indira Gandhi, considered the strongest leader in independent India.

Also read: In Final Leg of Campaign in Gujarat, It’s Modi Versus Rahul

Sonia herself has often emphasised the need for building up the party organisation. But she has taken little initiative to put the Congress house in order. It may be argued that by steering the Congress along the coalition route, she has harmed the party organisation in states.

Alliance partners like Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, even as they paid obeisance to Sonia at the national level, ensured marginalisation of the Congress in Bihar, rendering it a “doormat” of a party, as a Congress general secretary described. Barring aberrant states like Kerala, the Congress virtually does not have a well-knit organisation anywhere else.

Congress is a party of practical people who believe in a ‘give and take’ attitude. If the leadership wanted the support of state leaders, they needed to have been given their due. But Rahul appears to have ruffled many feathers by appointing a number of his loyalists as state presidents, despite the fact that they were political lightweights. This led to inevitable friction in several states be it Haryana, Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra.

In politics, the ability to keenly observe and understand the psychology of political adversaries constitutes a primary skill. Rahul completely failed to meet this challenge in the last Lok Sabha polls – he could not grapple with Modi and his tactics. The BJP used every trick in the trade to reach out to expand its sphere of influence and popularity.

It is an irony that despite being the ruling party then, Congress could neither anticipate the publicity blitzkrieg of Modi nor his novel use of latest technological techniques to connect to people. While Modi was ‘all things to all people’ in his political outreach, Rahul ended up being a publicity disaster.

Also read: The Congress Still Has a Long Way to Go

If Rahul has to rise to the occasion as Modi’s main challenger, he can resort to no shortcuts. He has to get down to the task of building the organisation and taking the seniors along while promoting the young to avoid sabotage from within the party.

Becoming the Congress president is an easy task, but leading the party later is a tough job. The job of the Congress president is to be a 24×7 hands-on leader. And there are no holidays. Already there are murmurs from partymen that they cannot meet Rahul as freely as they were able to meet Sonia.

During the UPA regime, Rahul kept his distance from the allies, upsetting many in the party. Even after Congress lost power, Rahul has made no effort to bridge this gap with his party colleagues. If Rahul can put up a credible fight in Gujarat, prospects will perhaps brighten for the Congress in Lok Sabha polls in 2019. But for that, Rahul needs to adopt a consistent strategy, given that Modi and Shah will put out all stops to repeat and even outflank their electoral triumph of 2014.

Sunil Gatade is a senior journalist.

Why Gujarat May End Up Being a Hard Nut to Crack for the BJP

With the Congress banking on anti-incumbency and the BJP seeing dwindled support among the dominant communities, the ruling party is unlikely to have an easy ride in Gujarat.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with BJP chief Amit Shah. Credit: Reuters

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with BJP president Amit Shah. Credit: Reuters

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah defied convention on Gandhi Jayanti when he announced in Porbandar at a party rally that the Gujarat assembly election is scheduled for the first week of December. With the Election Commission yet to officially announce dates, one wonders whether Shah was merely guessing or seeking to override the EC’s mandate. Either way, with Shah sounding the bugle, the much-awaited electoral battle has now officially begun. After all, the Modi-Shah duo considers Gujarat its prestige state, with the saffron party ruling there continuously for 22 years.

As the Congress is hoping to kick off its national campaign for the 2019 general polls by overthrowing the BJP from the state, the battle lines for a bipolar contest have now been drawn. On the face of it, while it is clear that the grand old party – rendered organisationally quite weak in the state over the past two decades – will have to arm itself with a novel strategy and renewed energy, it has also become apparent that the BJP will not have an easy ride this time.

Shah, while announcing the elections, focused on the “Gujarat model of development” and attacked Congress scion Rahul Gandhi for not being able to see this reality because of his “Italian glasses”, a direct – if somewhat tired – reference to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s country of origin. At a time when the Congress is banking upon perceptible anti-incumbency against the BJP, and the BJP’s support from among the state’s dominant communities is dwindling, Shah’s opening comment struck observers as being overly defensive.

The BJP had come into power by stitching together a coalition of various communities within the OBC section. Caste groups like Patidars, Thakors and Rajputs spearheaded the coalition and formed the bulk of the BJP’s leadership. This saffron coalition has successfully challenged former Congress chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki’s formula of getting the Kshatriyas, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims together under the party’s umbrella.

But if trends from the past few years are taken into account, a sizeable section of this OBC vote is set to go against the saffron party this time around. The Patidar and Thakor agitations, although apathetic to each other, have taken aim at the state government for rising unemployment and an unprecedented crisis in the agrarian sector. Both these communities are dominant and affluent, and command a substantial section of votes especially in the Saurashtra region (which comprises more than 60 seats in the 182-member assembly) and in central Gujarat.

In both these regions, the BJP has had great successes in elections before – but they could prove to be the party’s Achilles’ heel in 2017. If seen together with the ongoing Dalit agitation against the state’s poor response to growing cow vigilantism against cattle rearers and traders, the perception that Gujarat’s model of development hasn’t quite addressed the basic issues related to livelihoods has been gaining solid ground.

Things were different for the BJP while it had the advantage of the cult that Modi had built for himself as the longest serving chief minister of the state. However, after he became the prime minister, the BJP has been facing trouble as far as its state leadership is concerned. Modi’s chosen successor, Anandiben Patel, was abruptly removed amidst charges of corruption and highhandedness. Saurashtra leader and RSS loyalist Vijay Rupani was handed over the mantle to stem the opposition, but most BJP insiders agree that Rupani, a low-key leader, hasn’t been able to consolidate and control the volatile political ground.

In such circumstances, Shah has indicated with his speech in Porbandar that the Gujarat model will be the political rhetoric the party will use ahead of the upcoming polls. According to BJP sources in the state, the party hopes that this narrative will have an appeal across caste groups and bypass social anger against the party. At the same time, it would highlight the achievements of the Gujarat model to launch an attack against the Congress, which until now has solely relied on the anti-incumbency factor against the BJP but has not offered any alternative model of growth.

Positive outlook within the Congress

However, making things difficult for the BJP is a resurgent Congress, which has, unusually, hit the election mode ahead of the saffron party. Rahul Gandhi’s tour of Saurashtra, which is also a Patidar stronghold, in the last week of September, and him choosing to visit constituencies where his party has historically performed poorly, signal a positive outlook within the party.

Gandhi did well in the optics game too. In all his speeches, he targeted the Rupani government for failing to procure groundnut and cotton – two significant cash crops in Gujarat – on time. Poor procurement by the state government resulting in a steep fall in crop prices has led farmers – belonging mostly to dominant OBC communities – to agitate over the last few months. At the same time, he attacked the Modi government’s hasty implementation of the goods and services tax to cut some ice with traders, who form a significant population in Gujarat and have historically supported the BJP, but have been protesting against GST of late.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi meeting the supporters during his visit to Gujarat. Credit: PTI

Since unemployment has become a huge issue, especially after the implementation of GST, Gandhi made it a point to interact with sections of youth and women. In order to diffuse the BJP’s image as the only Hindu force, Gandhi also visited important Hindu shrines of Saurashtra.

Anti-incumbency factor

One of Gandhi’s aides told The Wire that the anti-incumbency sentiment against the BJP is quite perceptible on the ground, but the lack of a credible state-level leadership is holding the Congress back. “Gandhi’s recent trip to Gujarat was an eye-opening experience for many in the Congress. People are visibly angry. Many community leaders formed a beeline to meet Gandhi at every stop he made. In blocks where the Congress has not received even 4,000 votes, hundreds of influential people waited to meet him privately. This is undoubtedly a welcome sign for the Congress,” he said.

However, he added a note of caution as he felt that none of the state-level party leaders, including the state Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki, has put up a strong opposition for reasons unknown to the central leadership. According to many within the Congress, some of the influential state-level leaders fear reprisals from the ruling BJP, which seems to know about their allegedly corrupt personal histories.

To put its own house in order, the central leadership in August unprecedentedly appointed four working presidents for the state unit. Since all of them – Tushar Chaudhary, an Adivasi leader and son of former chief minister Amarsingh Chaudhary, Patel leaders Paresh Dhanavi and Kuwarji Bawaliya, and Karsan Das Sonali, a Dalit – belong to different communities and different regions of the state, it is apparent that the party has kept caste and regional considerations in mind. It has also constituted a 32-member state election committee and has brought back Satyajit Gaikwad, once a rising star in the Congress, as the vice-president of the state unit.

On social media, the Congress has had some degree of success in sidelining the BJP. With aggressive campaigns like vikas gando thai gayo chhe (BJP’s model of development has gone crazy) or mara hada chettri gaya (You have fooled me), it has forced even Shah, who has successfully employed a social media campaign to wrest the political advantage nationally, to tell people in Gujarat to not get swayed by “anti-BJP propaganda” on WhatsApp and Facebook.

An Ahmedabad-based RSS worker, who did not want to be named, told The Wire that the BJP will lose a significant section of its votes among the youth and that GST too has hurt the party a lot. “That is why,” he said, “the party is thinking of focusing on issues which will address the concerns of people above 35 years of age and simultaneously create a Modi hawa before polls. After the recent attack on Rahul Gandhi by the BJP leadership, RSS workers have communicated to the central leadership that the party should not launch a direct attack on Gandhi as the tactic may boomerang on us and give unnecessary publicity to him.”

He added that according to an Intelligence Bureau survey, the BJP may struggle to go beyond 110 seats, in which case it will still retain power but would have performed poorly compared to the previous elections.

Notwithstanding the report, which could either be credible or merely a bureaucratic exercise, RSS workers’ comments clearly signal that winning the state again may not be an easy task for the BJP. And the party realises that Modi alone can save the party from a possible debacle.

Clearly, the Congress is taking the contest seriously, like never before. Multiple tactics are being employed by the party leadership to change the political tide in the state.

Speaking to The Wire, independent activist and political analyst Sagar Rabari said, “The mood in Gujarat is anti-BJP at the moment except in some districts of south Gujarat like Valsad, Navsari and Surat where the Kori population is substantial. Koris (an OBC community) still support the BJP. The party has worked among Adivasis too and that may help it in winning some seats in south Gujarat. Elsewhere, in more affluent areas of Gujarat, there is a visible anger. But whether this will translate into votes for the organisationally weak Congress is something which we do not know yet.”

Without a clear alternative at present, the Gujarat polls will be won by the party which pulls ahead in this outmanoeuvring game that will follow in the next two months. With both parties beginning to raise their voice – and pitch – against each other, the stage is set for a bitter political fight.