A supporter’s analysis of - Bihar Election Results

(Published in the Millennium post in the issue of 13 november 2015, http://millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=166146 )
      Delhi and then in Bihar, election results have thrown the biggest challenge to the BJP since Modi became its driving force. The high-energy election campaign that worked for Amit Shah and Modi in recent times, failed to yield similar results in Delhi and Bihar. Modi is however, known for converting challenges into opportunities; infusing hopes during adverse circumstances; transforming despair and despondency into hope; injecting energy into dejected admirers; turning adversaries into admirers and successfully reversing the opposition strategies into his own advantage. I am sure, his admirers including me are feeling dejected at Bihar Election results, but not him.

     Statistically speaking, the strategy of Shah and Modi has worked even during these elections very well in retaining the loyal voters with them. They have been successfully maintaining the vote-shares despite going through these trying circumstances. The extreme ‘intolerant’ opposition of BJP and especially Modi, has provided enough reasons to keep BJP supporters on their edges, completely alert and active. Due to all this, votes in favour of BJP could never decrease any significantly even in these landslide and one-sided results. This is also the reason that even in these elections, feedback received by the leaders were identical to those when BJP reported landslide victories.

     So, where have they gone wrong? 

    There are more than many theories on offer even within BJP. RSS trying to cut Modi to his size; Advani supporters engineering these debacles; Modi’s diminishing popularity or his supporters getting disillusioned – but none of these would be able to explain how he has been able to retain the voters with him. These results, not surprisingly, give an opportunity to certain elements within BJP, to vent out their frustrations even on those issues that only remotely be considered as one of the reasons for the loss. Besides this, BJP has been ‘fortunate’ enough that even their adversaries do not shy away from advising Modi to ‘correct’ himself. After all they must have never gone through such a fear of extinction as they would have felt this time whenever this government displayed any success potentials.

    In my analysis, more than the problems within, in fact BJP lost these elections only because their aggressive style of campaigning forced its opposition to unite and huddle. BJP must realize that in the present circumstances, they are bound to lose against a united opposition. Statistically, if votes were shared between AAP and Congress in Delhi elections or if Nitish and Lalu were not united in Bihar, BJP would have swept these elections with the existing share of votes. In fact one of the prime reasons of the success of Modi in the general elections 2014 has been that his opposition never believed that Modi would ever be able to cross the mark. Statistically it can never be denied that in 2014 elections, historically, BJP got the highest number of seats with smallest percentage share of votes only because the opposition never felt any reason to get united. Even in Gujarat, only in the last assembly elections, BJP was in a position of taking on a united opposition.

     Now, to turn the tide in their favour, BJP needs to convince their voters that they can deliver on their promises. Once the voters are convinced, only then as per the Gujarat model, even a united opposition would fail to make any impact. Till then, instead of following the recent short-term impact style campaigns, BJP needs to work on twin long term strategies. Firstly, they must direct their aggression to display enough examples and hints that they would be able to deliver on their promises and secondly they must try to identify potential local leaders having clean images and help them build their images on issues of common interest following a long term plan. A loss in Bihar has saved BJP from raising the expectations of the voters further that would have burdened the leadership unnecessarily. And just as Modi had controlled the lunatic elements present on his side during his Gujarat tenure, he must stop everyone from interacting with media who would keep him engaged in explanations and other damage control exercises and would derail him from his single and winning plank of development. 

BJP - the Dalit of Indian Politics

(Published in the Organiser issue of November 8,2015 http://epaper.organiser.org/epaper.aspx?lang=4&spage=Mpage&NB=2015-10-31#Mpage_25 )
        These days BJP is experiencing what Dalits generally feel when they taste success. BJP symbolizes the forces, that were till recently discarded as ‘untouchables’ by the mainstream politics. To the discomfort of these mainstream forces, they have now been able to position themselves at the fulcrum of the Indian politics from where they are about to dictate a new paradigm. The upper caste political dispensation (Congress and Left combine) are unable to digest the rise of nationalist forces. They are losing their peace and balance as they find themselves cornered in the political space - to witness what they had never dreamt of. A socio-political mindset that was created and constructed by these upper-caste political constructs and was used to enjoying power since the British rule, is now being seriously challenged by the hitherto ‘marginalized’ BJP. Those who are suffering from the ‘ill-belief’ that only British or British-like mindset (read congress) can govern India - are losing their sleeps. Those who were used to getting favours from the government in return to their full time effort in maintaining this mind set (read as Left) have suddenly started losing their grounds. These forces have invested their life in trying to make us believe that we can be properly governed only through some ‘imported ideology’. Drawing parallel with the upper caste mentality, they wanted us to believe that ‘nationalist forces’ are not good enough to govern. They are convinced that, left on our own indigenous thoughts, we will fight to finish ourselves. They think that ‘nationalists’ need to be taught lessons on the idea of 'secularism', 'socialism', 'equal opportunity' and 'development' as they have least regard for these instruments that are absolutely necessary to claim any progress in the modern world. For this, they want us to feel ashamed of our past, to disown our existence and to feel dependent on borrowed constructs and imported ideology to think of making any meaningful progress.

          Just as the upper castes, they have carefully calibrated a socio-political order where those who were ready to disown their roots/existence and were ashamed of their past were categorized as acceptable and worthy for taking control of the government whereas those who drew inspiration from the past or from indigenous thoughts were termed as lumpens and goons required to be brainwashed before giving any responsibility. This upper caste construct in our political setup believed that their empire would grow with time and would never be in danger. Their unthinkable and unimaginable fears have come true with the Modi government storming at the centre. And what is making them restless is that this government is also showing genuine promise of making India a progressive and economically developed country despite refusing to toe their prescribed line.

          Modi refused to read out the line of apology that was almost being forced by Karan Thapar just to make Modi admit his guilt; Modi refused to enact the skull-cap ‘secular’ drama, he insisted with everyone to realize the sincerity of his comment regarding puppy killing instead of retracting on the same; he started taking pride in several personalities other than Nehru and Gandhi; he started exhibiting his pride in our ancient culture, beliefs and texts – and therefore as per the judgment of the existing upper caste political construct - Modi was not fit to occupy the chair. But to snatch them of their livelihoods Modi arrived at the centre.

          With their dooming future looming large, just to prove their conjectures right, these forces are prepared to do everything to prove that this government is undesirable. To save themselves from becoming extinct, they are bent upon blowing up events after events entirely out of proportions to somehow project that India is now destined to doom, that the liberal space of this country has shrunk all of a sudden and that this country has suddenly turned into a country of cannibals and conservative intolerant. They are doing this despite the fact that this country has started showing a great turnaround in economy – that was never witnessed before in this country. A careful and academic exercise would be enough to show statistics that though the hate incidences need to be curbed immediately and effectively but contrary to the secular’s projection - it is far from peaking recently.

POLITICS ON CRIME - the Indian Phenomenon

Over the years since independence, India has developed a strange habit of classifying ‘gruesome crimes’ as - ‘hate-generating’, ‘communal clashes’, ‘religious fanaticism’, ‘class atrocities’, ‘gender suppression’, ‘reactionary outbursts’, ‘revolutionary unrest’ and recently as ‘media marketable’. To cover up the governance failures, administrative inefficiencies and other corrupt practices the administration has found it extremely useful and easy to play politics on crimes. To their relief, these classifications have helped the successive governments in setting up a trend where all other kind of crimes that are left ‘unclassified’ gets considered as ‘simple’ and therefore almost as ‘acceptable’. The information about the ‘character’ of a crime has become so important that we have got used to the news headlines such as ‘crime against minority’, ‘crime against child’, ‘crime against woman’, ‘crime against Dalit’ - so much so that thinking of headlines as ‘crime against men’, ‘crime against a majority community’, ‘crime against an adult’ or ‘crime against an upper caste’ are either likely to evoke laughter or no response at all. 

Not that the ‘classified’ crimes get any better or the desirable attention, but the government utilizes this politics only to pass the blame somehow on the majority community entirely. Being arguably one of the most tolerant and accommodating community existing in the world, this majority is then expected either to absorb the blame or to start hating itself. Under this ‘secular formula' we are expected to accept all the blame as ‘evils’ of our society and at the same time are also left to consider all other ‘unclassified’ crimes as natural, simple, normal (and therefore desirable??).

As its natural consequence the Indian administration wastes much of its precious time in ‘discovering’, ‘investigating’ and  ‘establishing’ the color and shade of a crime when it is actually required to act swiftly and efficiently. I am convinced that until this country stops taking interest in knowing the caste, gender, religion, faith and ideology of a victim – politics will continue to sideline our real administrative concerns. Instead of doing a political comparative analysis, the state must be extremely serious and ruthless in addressing all crimes and thereby punishing each criminal blindly. 

Left - and Their art of provocation

(Published in the August 16, 2015 issue of Organiser and can be visited using this link http://organiser.org//Encyc/2015/8/10/Opinion---%E2%80%98Left%E2%80%99-and-their-Art-of-Provocation.aspx)
I often get amused at the fact that although leftists have always remained in hopeless minority in India but still they manage to influence and occupy the decision making instruments of this country. Fortunately for them, the overwhelming majority in this country is rational, liberal and have always remained against all kinds of victimization. Leftists use the 'politics of victim-hood' to influence this rational and liberal majority. They use different methods and tricks to project themselves as victims. They have mastered the 'act of provocation' and have evolved it into an effective weapon in this regard. Using apparently-patient and cunningly-academic techniques they provoke nationalists and force them in breaking the fine line of socially acceptable behavioral norms. Then they use those incidents to paint the nationalists as hooligans and goons. They efficiently abuse the 'freedom of expression' and stretch the limits of 'human rights' to provoke nationalists to force them in committing legal-lapses. To succeed in their evil designs, they go to any extent to provoke the nationalists forces. They would not hesitate in calling a social and peaceful organization producing nationalists for the country as a terrorists' organization and would also go to the extent of not only blaming an arguably progressive community as repressive and conservative but instead would also project the other community, that needs reforms urgently, as better. To provoke the nationalists they not only never hesitated in creating a hero out of Aurangzeb but also painted the greats like Sikh gurus, Rana Pratap and Shivaji in poor light in the same breath. They would not only ignore an entire carnage incident altogether but keep on reminding us the incidents that took place after that. They would not only ignore the exodus of a particular 'Pandit' community from a state but would also not stop from asking the army to leave the state. They would resort to support a terrorist waiting to be hanged and they can even show that community as communal who is the reason for secularism in our country. They keep on producing and screening films that would project only nationalists as rioters. The list is huge and they have built this up in the last century with the help of British before the independence and the Congress thereafter. The only factor that favored the nationalists till now and was completely underestimated by the leftists was the fact that Indians have always felt a positive influence of religion and our faiths have an overwhelmingly progressive outlook towards our thoughts and beliefs. This striking feature of our religious behavior and spirituality, irrespective of our worshiping styles, did not allow leftists to spread its influence horizontally but with the help of the rulers they have been able to spread their roots deep in our soul wherever they could.

Nationalists however, need to realize now that they are in a position to spread their influence in this country after a very long era and they must now counter this age-old left strategy by refraining from falling into their trap again and again. Nationalists forces have an opportunity to construct a trap for them that would help in exposing the anti-national mindset of the 'left-leaning intellectuals'.