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| Declining BJP: Admirers of Modi turn critics | | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Dec 27: Narendra Modi as BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate had impressed many leading writers, authors and opinion-leaders and the result was that they pinned full faith in his leadership and the BJP, hoping that this party would behave differently. They were so impressed that they saw in Narendra Modi a ray of hope. One such best selling author author and opinion leader was well-known Chetan Bhagat.
But things have now changed and changed drastically with opinion-makers like Bhagat opining that the BJP has lost its sheen and appeal and that the BJP would lose its political space if it continued to behave in the fashion it behaved after May 2014 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
They have given more marks to the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who calls himself anarchist and is known more for creating scenes than anything else. "In the last few weeks, AAP has managed to do all of the following: deflect attention from its own problems (including a 400% pay hike for MLAs and an ill-conceived, tokenistic odd-even Delhi pollution plan), put BJP on the defensive, made the finance minister of the country run to the courts, created a rift within BJP, placed AAP in primetime news for weeks, had the entire Parliament in a twist and positioned CM Arvind Kejriwal yet again as Modi's rival number one, and thus the go-to person if you hate Modi for whatever reason," he said in his "The 3 Ds of Indian Politics: what the masses crave from their leaders - Drama, Drama and Development". "Nobody understands this better at the moment than AAP. Whatever you may say about the morality and ethics of it, AAP's PR strategy has given them what they crave - a national stage, primetime coverage, positioning of their leader as head to head against PM Narendra Modi," he also said. Chetan Bhagat is correct in his assessment.
As for the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said: "When BJP has created content, it is for the wrong reasons and by the wrong people. Yogi Adityanath and his like have given us drama, but it's drama that damages the BJP brand. The trick is to come up with content that is brand value accretive to the party. Frankly, at the moment, BJP is hopeless at it. BJP talks up how many villages it has electrified, or how many countries are coming to invest in India. May be it is true. But it only gives them a score in one subject out of the three - development. There are solutions. Where is the PM's wit and charm, which was used so successfully in the LS election campaign? Yes, we do see the PM on TV. But how many guard of honour ceremonies for the PM can we watch? How many chest thumping NRI meets can we witness? Neither is Mann ki Baat the same as taking extempore questions. The PM's initiatives, like Swacch Bharat, are all sweet and nice and important, but hardly controversial. Why do BJP ministers have to behave like grumpy uncles? If Arvind Kejriwal attacks BJP, why make defensive statements like 'we didn't raid him, we raided the principal secretary'? Or 'we haven't done anything, we will take you to court'? Why not a smile, followed by 'Arvind ji, we know you want to live in 7 RCR, should we arrange a room for you there?' For all of BJP's conspiracy theories, the media isn't biased towards any party. It is biased towards drama. Even Donald Trump, a US presidential frontrunner and creator of enormous drama, admitted that the media covers anything as long as it gets viewers. He said you could cure the world of a major disease, but if you don't get ratings you will not be covered. If you bore, you don't deserve the media. Simple. And if you are not covered in the media but your rivals are, you will suffer politically".
"BJP needs a major wake up call. It must alter not just its PR strategy but its entire political strategy. A party with everything going for it less than two years ago has become easy game for all. Lack of talent, over-confidence, misjudgment of the current political scenario have led to this situation. BJP's worst nightmare is a hotchpotch coalition - a Maha Federal Front - defeating it in 2019. This wasn't a real possibility a year ago, but it is now".
The assessment of Bhagat in this case also appears to e correct. For, the BJP has suffered only defeats and defeats in 2015. It suffered humiliating defeats in the Bihar and Delhi Assembly elections; it suffered defeats in by-polls held in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand (both BJP ruled States); it suffered humiliating defeats in the Panchayat and local bodies' elections in the BJP-ruled states such as Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and in the crucial Uttar Pradesh. The only victory that it witnessed was in the Leh Council elections, where it unseated the Congress which was at the helm of affairs for 15-long years.
Indeed, the BJP's popularity is declining and declining very fast. That the BJP-led NDA with more than 335 seats in the Lok Sabha has not been able to run the Parliament speaks for itself. An impression has gone down that a party that cannot run the Parliament just can run the country. "BJP needs a major wake up call" suggestion of Bhagat needs to be viewed in this context.
Will the BJP leadership sit up to find where it has gone wrong, change its style of functioning and review its foreign, military, economic and social policies as well as policy towards Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir? Any failure on its part to retrospect and appreciate the national sentiment would only ensure its political demise and help the Congress and similar other parties capture its political space as it happened in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. |
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