VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
With general elections less than
a year away, a flurry of political activity — Narendra Modi getting into the
centrestage of national politics, LK Advani refusing to retire and throwing his
towel in the ring, the dead as a dodo Federal or Third Front saying it is alive
and kicking and the JD(U) divorcing its 17-year-old partner — gripped the
people.
Reams have been written about the
Gujarat Chief Minister getting a national role in BJP after becoming chairman
of the Campaign Committee. No one will bother to find out who was the chairman
of this Campaign Committee before Modi. That is irrelevant. The symbolism of
the appointment was there before everybody not only in the BJP but also other
parties as well. It was obviously a major step which would catapult Modi as the
prime ministerial candidate of the party in the battle ahead. A sulking Advani
refused to go to Goa where the announcement was made,
kept blogging, resigned from party posts and finally the big brother RSS came
into the picture to assuage the hurt sentiments of the perennial rath yatri.
All this was perhaps on expected
lines and so was the decision of the JD(U) to part ways with BJP. The BJP could
not have gone into the polls with the same old tired faces whom the electorate
rejected twice in 2004 and 2009. Remember Advani was the prime ministerial
candidate of the party in 2009 and it got lesser seats than it got in 2004. It
simply could not afford a third straight loss. No political party can.
BJP had to do something new,
something big, come out with a fresh idea and approach to reinvigorate its
cadres and motivate them for victory which has been eluding the party for the
last two elections. The Modi phenomenon may work or may not work. But at least,
an attempt has been made to provide a fresh alternative and approach. You
simply cannot go into the next World Cup of cricket with Sachin Tendulkar and
Sunil Gavaskar as the fulcrum of Indian batting. Perhaps the entire BJP
realized this except Advani. As the political saga in the BJP unfolds in the
next few months, you can expect more from Advani to remain in the limelight
within and outside the party. He is not going to give it away easily and fade
into oblivion.
But I fail to understand what the
JD(U) and its earlier avatar Samta Party thought all this while. Perhaps it
thought that Advani was more “secular” as compared to Modi in the last 17 years
of the alliance. Perhaps it thought that Ram Mandir agitation and the
accompanying riots were secular acts and the riots in Gujarat
post the Godhra incidents were communal. The Nitish Kumar led party also
perhaps thought that the Ram Mandir agitation, the chief architect of which was
Advani was too old and out of the memory and radar of the people whom it is
trying to nurture as a vote bank.
As JD(U) built its base in Bihar
on the edifice of shabby governance by the Lalu Yadav led RJD in the years
following the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the arrest of Advani by the
then Bihar government headed by Lalu Yadav, it never thought that there was
anything wrong, that it was aligning with the “communal” Advani and his party.
All of a sudden it sees virtues in the grand old leader and finds him secular
while dubbing Modi as communal with the same brush. People of the state and the
voters would not buy that theory. As the entire political drama in Bihar
has been scripted with an eye on the 17 per cent or so Muslim votes, the
experiment is bound to fail. The party would perhaps realise this in the elections.
Bereft of a solid upper caste
support base, there is no dominant caste now in the new electoral arithmetic of
Bihar which the JD(U) faces, the party seems to be headed in the Congress fold
like the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in UP. The Kurmi caste, from
which Nitish Kumar hails, is hardly dominant in any part of the state except in
some southern areas. The Extremely
Backward Castes and the Mahadalits, assiduously built as vote bank by Kumar,
too remain marginal all over the state and sparsely distributed in every
constituency to make any electoral impact. In addition, the Muslims are being
wooed by not only the JD(U) but also RJD and the Congress, making the division
of votes imminent. The JD(U) may survive in the remaining term of its government
even without BJP but the future and also a national role seems too distant now.
The defeat of the JD(U) in Maharajganj Lok Sabha by-poll is an indicator of the
things to come.
Perhaps the JD(U) sees hope in
the fledgling Federal Front which has been there in its various avatars over
the years ever since the failed 1977 Janata Party experiment following
emergency. Old timers still remember the daily dose of political drama and instability
which led to the collapse of the government in three years.
It was followed by more drama
with the Third Front and United Front leaders getting a chance in the sun with
prime ministers like VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar HD Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar
Gujaral coming and going on the musical chair. All of them had short tenures,
there is nothing about them to remember and it was crass political opportunism
which saw them in chair in the first place. Ironically, the so called Federal
Front leaders have not learnt by experience even when none of the experiments
succeeded without the support of the main parties. While V P Singh was propped
up by the Left and the Right-Communist parties and the BJP, all others like
Chandra Shekhar, Gujaral and Deve Gowda were propped up by the Congress and
dumped at the first given opportunity. Before them, there was Jat leader Charan
Singh who fulfilled his prime ministerial ambitions after being propped up by
the Congress in 1979 and never faced Parliament before being dumped
unceremoniously.
In this era, it would be
difficult to imagine a conglomeration of political forces as diverse as Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool
Congress, Naveen Pattnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Chandra Babu Naidu’s TDP,
Jayalalitha’s AIADMK, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) or Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi
Party coming together just for the sake of power without any common minimum
programme and understanding. This is simply not tenable. The egos of these
regional chieftains are huge and nothing in this world is going to ensure that
it falls in place. All of them have prime ministerial ambitions and the country
can ill afford to have so many prime ministers in waiting. The country also
cannot afford a political non-entity on the chair with the decisions being
taken by a syndicate comprising so many leaders of varying temperaments,
ideology, beliefs and ambitions.
Indian polity is gradually
becoming bipolar with Congress and the BJP as the two poles at the national
level. But obviously, in the next elections, the regional players would play a
major role. But the election cannot be seen as a contest of regional
conglomerations. People have to be
presented an alternative with alliances in place before the polls. If the dozen
odd leaders of the so called Third or the Federal Front think that they will
first win the polls in the state and then strike a deal at a later stage, this
is not going to work. (June 17, 2013 )
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