The Nagpur meet has come as a change to party watchers who thought the BJP's campaign would never begin. It has been a while since the BJP and NDA declared L K Advani as the Opposition candidate for Prime Minister and tried to build a buzz around his personality. The strategy never worked; Advani's efforts failed to arouse little more than scholastic interest among political junkies. To his credit, the formidable Advani tried his best to become larger than life; he wrote a massive volume compiling his immense political life experience, tried to reach out to the young through the internet and recently, through blogging; but things never qute took off. Advani was ridiculed for being too old to lead an aspiring young nation and a shamelessly partisan elite media kept rooting for Rahul Gandhi to take over as an "Indian Obama"... that's right; a man with a shockingly low political IQ as Rahul Gandhi, whose elevation to high office should cause any hard working man or woman to swear under his/her breath against the "class privilege of the lazy rich"; is suggested as a parallel to America's transformational new President, who overcame barriers of racial prejudice, institutional power and poverty to rise from the middle class wasteland to Harvard, to the United States Senate and then to the White House! It does not get any more surreal than this...
The BJP's Nagpur meet was an improvement in the sense that one saw nothing of the blame game that has become pervasive in BJP circles. The BJP is under pressure and frustrated at not being seen as a favourite to win the Lok Sabha polls in April-May. Ever since the BJP-NDA declared Advani as the Prime Ministerial candidate, there have been 8 major Assembly elections. Of these, the BJP has won 5 on its own, improved its performance vastly in a sixth (J&K) and lost two. The Congress has won one, emerged as single largest party in one and lost six. That is 2 positives to the BJP's 6! The BJP realizes that it has to use its worker base to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, since not even a 6-2 advantage will translate into the slightest media coverage in favour of the party.
With this understanding, the BJP began at Nagpur, with LK Advani urging party workers to probe the ground and listen to the people. This meet lacked the bluff and bluster of previous party meetings, in that it was austere in self congratulation and forthcoming in terms of self evaluation. First of all, the BJP has decided to opt for a more "dissipated" campaign, with regional leaders taking charge of each state. This has been done in the absence of a single polarizing national issue and the failure to create an aura around the person of Advani. Advani, for his part, has been extremely dynamic in the last one year, struggling to repackage himself. Although the venerable leader probably realizes that it is well nigh impossible for him to break all associations with the past, he is not about to give up. Advani has been, in fact, spectacularly optimistic ever since he was declared as candidate for Prime Minister. Advani has appeared at book signings, has created a website with a smart new feel and tried to be everywhere at once. The party organization has often failed him in this respect. Advani conceived the series of Vijay Sankalp rallies across the country, but the party machine could hardly bear him out. Nevertheless, he has refused to be discouraged. At one such rally in Ranchi, he was so moved by the response that he asked for a personal video copy of the events.
At the Nagpur meet, Advani was his new self yet again, refusing to read from the prepared text of his address, instead launching into a fiery speech all on his own. In his speech, Advani mentioned each of the BJP's second generation leaders in turn, reserving the fewest words but the most fulsome praise for Modi. Modi, for his part, still seems to be taking stock of the situation, content to let the BJP leadership and the media hang on to his every word, holding back word on whether he plans to become Prime Minister one day. Modi's tirade against the Gandhi dynasty made headlines all around, but little else was heard from the BJP's most charismatic leader.
Apart from this, the BJP made some stunning decisions at the Nagpur meet. Following 2004, the BJP had, for long articulated their decision to make the top leadership of the party contest elections. It, therefore, came as a shock that both Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley had decided to stay away from contesting elections. Only Sushma Swaraj would try her luck, possibly from Bhopal. This is precisely the kind of flip flop that has been letting the BJP down in Delhi. Despite winning so many states, the BJP has never looked very decisive in the last five years. From Uttar Pradesh to New Delhi; and from Bihar to Jharkhand and Orissa, there is a sense that the BJP is bowing out of contests, very much like the Congress.
The absence of an NDA outlook at this crucial meeting was conspicuous. This can only mean that the BJP is getting too comfortable with its NDA allies and has stopped taking their occasional disgruntled murmurings seriously. After all, the NDA core group consisting of the JD(U) , Sena, SAD and BJD has come to be so closely identified with the BJP that chances of these parties seeking realignment are few. The BJP's main concern should be with how small this group really is and how the party has failed to draw any other major regional party "into orbit" since the elections of 1999. There have been alliances: with Chautala's INLD, Mayawati's BSP, Jaya's AIADMK, Naidu's TDP and Gowda's JD(S), but little has come of these alliances that is of lasting value. In fact, the BJP has grown increasingly distant from two former friends: Chandrababu Naidu and Mamata Banerjee.
The BJP is, therefore, caught between two stools. On the one hand, the party has had to contend with increasing disenchantment of core supporters, bickering among party factions and a diminishing Hindutva vote. On the other, the party has the challenge of coalition building. Paradoxically, the same issues that unite the BJP and give it its unique identity are those that scare away potential allies. Coupled with the fact that the BJP has been stripped of its "rising star" appeal of the 90's, the party has been limping around the political arena, looking for friends. The eagerness of the Congress to negotiate and compromise on all issues except the leadership of the divine family has proved to be a superior asset for the sake of coalition building. The extensive "name and shame campaign" carried out against "communal forces" in India still has some bite left. For the BJP, the stigma has remained, the star quality has not.
The BJP, in turn, chose to put its house in order. The party chose to project the two issues that virtually every BJP worker, leader and sympathiser can agree upon: building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and bringing down the Gandhi dynasty. This effectively means that the BJP has decided to seek no new alliances until the election. It's a cynical approach, built on the idea that post election support will coalesce around whoever is ahead. The trouble is; if the Congress goes into the election with too many allies and the BJP with too few, the NDA might just fall a few seats short of the UPA, at which time the secular bogey will be evoked to thrust yet another Gandhi government upon the country. The BJP hopes to maximise the number of seats contested by having fewer seat sharing arrangements, thus winning the race to become the single largest party. Unless the BJP can beat the Congress by a considerable margin, this strategy will not work.
As the BJP gets back to the business of working on the General Elections, it is good that the party has given itself a moment to plan about the future. It had been said that the BJP's political rise was only meteoric, with the party sure to fall apart due to internal bickerings soon after losing power. It had been said that the NDA would disintegrate after May 2004. In the later half of 2004, there were plenty of signs that all this was about to happen. But, slowly yet surely, the BJP and the NDA have prevailed over the prophets of doom. A face has begun to emerge, a hint of the "chaal, charitra, chehra" of the the BJP that is to be. It had been lamented that, "once upon a time, the BJP had a strong leader at every level", a setup that had collapsed when the BJP leaders flocked to the Centre to share power in Delhi. Ten years hence, Vasundhara, Modi, Shivraj Singh, Raman Singh, Yeddyurappa, Sushil Modi have fallen into place again. The managers and spokesmen: Javadekar, Jaitley, Swaraj, Naqvi, Ravi Shankar have come to the fore. A farmer's son has taken over as party president. It is a victory, not of dynasties, but of organizational ability. It has been a long time coming for the only political party in India with an internal democracy, but it has happened.
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