Tuesday, December 13, 2022

It Is Not Just About The (Gujrat) Elections!

I predicted BJP will win Gujrat comfortably. I was probably one of roughly one billion people who predicted the win. However, the extent of the BJP's win still caught everyone off-guard. The party winning more than 150 seats in a Vidhansabha of 182 seats is truly astounding and without any precedence. Yes, the Communists in Bengal probably won with such a margin but then apples to oranges people...apple to oranges! 

The political pundits are having field day post results. The oneupmanship generally leads to rehashing, reusing, reiterating and repurposing the same points ad nauseam. At this point an AI bot can write a better analysis since it's only wordplay and word jugglery. BJP won because of Modi. Ok. They won because of Hindutva. Ok. They won because of the massive amount of money. Really? They won because of EC, EVMs, and everything in between is working for BJP. Got it. BJP won because of Majoritism. Isn't that a wordplay on Hindutva? BJP won because of AAP's fragmented anti-BJP votes. Ok. BJP won because the voters did not come out to vote. What? BJP won because Congress let them. BJP won because the party and the PM are always in electioneering mode. 

The list just goes on. Yet no political pundit ever delves into how hard it is to run for an election and run a campaign. Any sort of respect to the voters is virtually absent. No one thinks that maybe voters know the  better option and what is best for them. No analysis talk about the politicking that goes behind getting a ticket or giving a ticket, the caste equation, the gender equation, the religion equation, the booth level management, the list is long but true nature and true reasons for any win by any political party in any type of election can be found only in such details. In short, treat the analysis in NDTV or TOI, or Indian Express at par with Filmfare gossip column. 

For any political party, to win an election is an achievement. To win it consecutively is simply outstanding. It requires variety of factors to work in sync. It starts with a strong ideology and strong pride in that ideology. It requires strong leadership, a strong cadre, strong grass-root support, strong party functionaries, and strong election mechanization including exhaustive public outreach. It requires identifying long-term issues voters are facing and aligning these issues with short-term controversies to rile up the masses. It requires close alignment of the political party's long-term and short-term goals. It requires dropping some candidates and being ready for heartburn. It requires picking up new faces and betting on them. It requires media management. It's like an orchestra. And everything has to work just perfectly to produce a melody and not white noise. 

What political party has all the above? It's a rhetorical question. Only one political party currently checks all the boxes above and that's BJP. The other political party that comes a very distant second is the Communist Party of India (CPI). Though it's safe to say that CPI is so irrelevant that I will just stop my sentence here. Pretty much every other political party in India is a family-owned business. An overwhelming majority of these political parties are regional parties with regional ambition. The parties that are not a family business are a fiefdom. For example, AAP or JD(U). These two parties revolve around a single individual, a dictatorship. The party is likely to cease to exist in case if Kejariwal suddenly emigrates to the US or if Nitish Kumar suddenly retires. In any case, none of these parties have any ideology, any strong cadre beyond the state border, no developmental agenda or a national-level message, no governance to manage the party, no long-term goal beyond holding on to the power by any means. There is only so much controversy one can generate, there is only so much fooling one can do. As Lincoln famously said "You can fool some people sometimes, everyone one time but you cannot fool everyone all the time. 

If we apply above parameters to recent election results then suddenly the current success in garnering voter percentage BJP does not come as a surprise. I specifically called out voter percentage and not the seats won. For example, BJP's vote share went up only 3.5% in BJP but the seats went up by more than 50. While in Himachal Pradesh, BJP's vote share did not go down at all, yet, their tally of seats came down by quite a bit. The party is steadfastly working towards garnering the voting share and not just the seats since they know eventually, the voting share will increase their probability to win. The party has grown drastically in the last decade or so but it was the only one that has been growing since 1989. Their identity and ideology have not changed. Their election manifesto on key issues remains the same and their promises, whether on Hindutva or development, are also intrinsically same. Their cadre has remained strong and the party is run like a well oiled machine. The central leadership does have the last say over everything but the regional leadership still gets to shine brightly in their regions. They have short-term goals of winning, literally, every election in their stronghold but the long-term goal is to spread wings in the states where BJP is historically weak. For that goal, they are ready to invest time and money. They are investing in younger leaders and patiently waiting for them to grow in their shoes. Take the example of Tamil Nadu. Mark my words, BJP will be a force to reckon with in TN within this decade. 

Nothing lasts forever and BJPs success will not be an exception. Currently, most of the political parties are unable to counter BJP.  BJPs' greatest success won't be all the good work they are doing. It will be creating a credible political opponent that are similar to them with a strongly nationalistic ideology and with a progressive developmental agenda. 

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