BJP: Now or Never

Whether we like it or not, Maharashtra, of the three States that went to the polls, the results of which were declared yesterday, has mattered most. It is not because of the hate campaign launched by the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) against North Indians. Maharashtra was crucial because a match with national implications between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was on, and in a State, mind you, that was so full of issues despite what many said an ‘issueless’ election. Sharing power for 10 years, the Congress was facing a huge anti-incumbency wave, compounded by its glaring failure in all areas of governance and administration. It was an excellent opportunity for the BJP to exploit the anti-incumbency quotient and prove its merit in a contest that would have many a national ramification — especially at a time when the right-of-centre politics is being written off, thanks to the BJP’s inability to move with time despite a series of setbacks and its utter disregard of the need for reaching out to the electorate with a better model of governance. And what did the BJP do? Practically nothing, as though the Maharashtra electorate would vote for the saffron party just because the Congress had been calling the shots from the corridors of power in Mumbai, along with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), for an uninterrupted 10-year innings. That is not how voters would behave in a democracy, especially in the era of coalition politics. They would look for a viable alternative, in the absence of which the choice would obviously be the incumbent. Since Maharashtra’s was a different game with national implications for both the ruling Congress and the largest opposition party in the country struggling to consolidate its rightist position, and since there was no dearth of issues there (right from the 26/11 attack to the acute agrarian crisis to the governance mess), the BJP’s failure points to the sharp shrinkage of political space it can fit in and wield influence. This is a sad moment for Indian democracy, and the BJP is depriving the democracy of the much-needed vibrancy. What is democracy without a meaningful opposition?

There is no gainsaying that the BJP is the only force capable of countering the Congress and its retrograde culture of sycophancy at the feet of the Dynasty; that the saffron party remains the democratic hope, though quite faint at this point of time, for a progressive right-of-centre competitive politics; and that it still has the potential to script a radically different governance, administration and development thesis. However, greed for party positions, lack of direction, obsession with ideas that no longer inspire the youth of the 21st century, lack of courage to come out of the cocoon of irrelevant and inappropriate ideas, and inability to project a new, dynamic leadership have crippled the BJP. The fact of the matter is that the party has not learnt the art of profiting from experience, nor is it showing any willingness to learn it. It is now a now-or-never situation for the BJP, which is its own making and which it alone can undo. With the Right living in a warp disconnected from the reality of the day (quite like the Left whose days are numbered), the Congress is currently on the top of the world without doing anything worthwhile but only for the shambolic BJP state of affairs. The Congress is triumphant because the BJP has allowed it to happen all over the country. THE SENTINEL