Will the Modi campaign bring the party 170 seats or 200 seats? It’s a world of a difference.
Kumar Ketkar
If
opinion polls are to be believed, it is only a matter of a fortnight
before Narendra Modi is sworn in as prime minister. About a year ago, no
one—not even the BJP—took the aggressive assertions of Modi and his
fanatics seriously. Six months ago, when his juggernaut began to roll,
the Congress seemed paralysed and clueless, the Left looked irrelevant,
the regional parties stumped, awed, shocked. And now, the only question
being asked everywhere is: How strong is the Modi wave and will it bring
the BJP 200-220 Lok Sabha seats? A frightening and farcical mass
hypnosis seems to have affected society.
Our
sights are so low that the very definition of ‘wave’ has undergone a
change. Nobody ever described Pandit Nehru’s victories as waves though
he led the Congress to victory with 364 seats in 1952; 371 in 1957; and
361 in 1962. Talk of waves became fashionable 1971 onward. When Indira
Gandhi won by a landslide on the ‘Garibi hatao’ slogan in 1971, it was
called an Indira wave. The defeat of Indira and Sanjay Gandhi in 1977
was attributed to a Janata wave. In fact, after the Janata Party
victory, everyone had concluded that the Congress and the Dynasty was
over and that India had won a second independence.
Janata Party
leaders—who were seen as Emergency-born ‘freedom fighters’—symbolised
this second freedom by taking oaths of office in the presence of
Jaiprakash Narayan and Acharya Kripalani at Rajghat.
In
contrast to waves of that momentum and magnitude, the media and opinion
polls today are trying to see a ‘Modi wave’ in the BJP’s target of as
low as 180-200 Lok Sabha seats—almost half the numbers won by Nehru,
Indira or even the Janata Party. Election watchers and Modi followers
seem to ignore the fact that should the BJP fail to get 182 seats (the
Vajpayee benchmark of 1999), the swearing-in being visualised by the
saffron brigade will have to be cancelled. Also, they don’t seem to be
taking note that anything less than 182 seats for the BJP will be seen
as a diminution of Modi. What then, if the ‘Modi wave’ tots up only 170
seats?
That’s
neither my wishful thinking nor a prediction, just an exploration of
possibilities. In 2004, despite the presence of a towering figure like
Vajpayee, and the high-voltage ‘India Shining’ campaign, the BJP was cut
down from 182 to 137. (In fact, it’s likely that in 2014, the Congress
could face that sort of humiliation, thinning down from the obese
current figure of 206. But that does not necessarily mean that the BJP
will get 200-plus!)
Till
the results are out, all of us have the liberty to speculate and write
scenarios. So let me say that this landmark election is essentially
being fought in only 30 constituencies. Let me elaborate. If the
Modi-led BJP touches the 200 mark, he is clearly marching to 7 Race
Course Road, though there could be hiccups. For, with 200, he has enough
allies to remove the roadblocks and take the NDA tally to 250. If Dr
Manmohan Singh could form a government in 2004 with just 145 Congress
MPs, 200 plus 50 is a dream number for the BJP. If the BJP crosses 225
on its own and the NDA touches 272, the Sensex will hit the ceiling on
May 16 and go over the top to 25,000, generating unprecedented euphoria.
That can easily last over a month, for Modi will cleverly announce
populist and business-friendly policies. At that BJP tally, the
disaster for the Congress will be huge and Rahul’s leadership could come
into question.
Now
another scenario. Modi has threatened—with backing from the RSS—that if
he’s not made prime minister, the BJP will sit in opposition. That is,
would-be partners had better know that there will be no “compromise PM”
in a BJP-led government. In this case, it will not be possible for any
of the remaining parties to take the lead in forming government. Mamata
would not go with the Left; Mulayam Singh Yadav cannot go with Mayawati;
the DMK cannot associate with AIADMK. The only option will be a
ramshackle government that will go for an early mid-term poll. But no
party would want another election in a year or two. The parties and the
candidates would be too exhausted. So, under the threat of yet another
election, many a party could melt and support a Modi-led government.
But
just as this scenario is possible, the other extreme, too, cannot be
ruled out. If the Modi-led BJP is stuck with 170 seats, he won’t
possibly get 105 from other parties without massive compromises and
vicious horse-trading. Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalitha and Mayawati
could well extract their pound of flesh from the vegetarian Modi. Knives
will also be out in the Sangh parivar. With a dozen less than
Vajpayee’s 1999 tally of 182, it will be humiliation for Modi and his
campaign that cost thousands of crores. Corporates and mncs that
invested in the Modi brand will be shocked.
Restless, Relentless A Modi supporter canvassing door-to-door in Mumbai
So again, as I said,
it’s a question of 30 seats—the difference between 170 and 200. If the
BJP is stuck at the lower figure, Modi’s detractors in the RSS and the
party will question his so-called popularity and charisma. Hidden
Brutuses will unsheath their knives and his own party could end his
dreams of prime ministership. Surely he could wait for another round,
but—given the spectacular campaign he has created this time—one can be
sure it will be difficult to replicate the mood and the momentum.
So
if it’s a fight for 30 seats—and not all 543—where are these 30 crucial
seats? Put another way, which seats could the Congress and other
anti-BJP parties focus on to slow the juggernaut? That’s not a tough
question. In the four southern states, the BJP is on the margins. In the
east and the northeast, the lotus does not bloom. In western and
central India—Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—the
BJP is already peaking. So there are effectively only two states—Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar—from which he could win the jackpot and march beyond
170, presuming, of course, that he can take 170 for granted.
If
the Congress, the BSP and the Samajwadi Party could arrive at an
understanding that they would not let the Modi juggernaut get more than
its current tally of 20 seats in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP would be stuck
like the Nazi forces were stuck in the winter and thick snow of
Stalingrad. And if Bihar too denies the BJP more than its current tally
of 15 seats, Modi’s Operation Barbarossa could be blocked. Modi’s
strategists know this. This is why he set the goal of 272-plus seats for
the BJP very early—actually, even before the campaign was set in
motion. If indeed the BJP wins those many seats, it will be a real
landslide—from 116 to 272 is a quantum jump and for a party like the BJP
to achieve it is close to revolutionary.
But
the Congress is in no position to put up that effective a fight. In
fact, it went into decline almost immediately after the victory of 2009,
which gave the party the stunning and totally unexpected number of 206
seats. The best case scenario projected for the Congress in 2009 by an
opinion poll was about 180 seats. Even the Congress war room was
surprised that it had won a war it did not really fight. The crucial
seats had come from Andhra Pradesh (where it won 31 seats, one more than
in 2004) and Uttar Pradesh (where it won 21 seats). But these results
were unexpected: the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was supposed to be
facing anti-incumbency; and in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress had not
really re-established itself strongly enough. But for those 52 bonus
seats, the Congress would have been stuck at 154, or with a few more
seats retained, at 165 seats maximum. Indeed, the Congress had already
started backdoor talks with Nitish Kumar then. That was the first time
Nitish warmed up to the Congress and began to be cold towards the BJP.
Delhi grapevine was abuzz with stories that Manmohan had begun to pack
up and that the movers and shakers had been alerted. The Left had made
it clear it would not support a Congress prime minister. But nobody
really anticipated that the Left’s tally would come down to 31 from its
high point of 62, and that the BJP would collapse to 116. The 2009
results were even more shocking than 2004. In fact, those 206 seats in
the Congress’s kitty acted as an anaesthetic drug and since then the
Congress has been sleeping with eyes wide shut.
In
the BJP, on the other hand, the decline and fall was of L.K. Advani.
With the Lok Sabha tally down to 116, the RSS made it clear to the
patriarch that he should quit leadership and make space for someone else
if he cannot bring the party to power. It was the 2009 BJP debacle that
set Modi off on his ‘Chalo Delhi’ project. But he had to win the
Gujarat elections in 2012 before embarking on a Delhi mission, and he
turned the Gujarat campaign into a dress rehearsal for 2014. An
elaborate war machine was created, with event management teams, research
teams, social media groups, fund management networks in India and
abroad, election monitors, lawyers and ex-police officers, former
intelligence operatives and of course platoon upon platoon of corporate
executives and young MBAs. In fact, the old guard in the RSS is
apprehensive of these teams because their idiom is different and their
approach is much like the sales and marketing machinery of big
international corporates.
Modi
is the CEO of this giant ‘corporate’. Like a target-driven and
success-centric chief sales manager who pushes his sales teams into
frenzy by giving them attractive but unachievable goals, Modi has told
his team members they must score 272-plus with the aim of not only of
decimating the Congress but destroying it. He and the RSS want to avenge
the defeat and humiliation of 2004 and 2009. Management colleges exhort
their students to develop the killer instinct. Modi has never gone to
such colleges, but has nevertheless internalised the virtues of that
predator instinct. Aggressive sales managers like him demand from their
footsoldiers fulfilment of targets by hook or by crook. The ends matter,
the means don’t.
If
he did not set them a target of 540-plus, it’s not because he would not
have nursed grandiose dreams of reaching that tally, but because even
‘killer’ managers recognise the irrationality and absurdity of setting
such targets. Anybody who has worked in large corporate sales teams is
aware of the hatred the field staff feel for their ruthless
task-masters. The RSS, despite its own sort of ruthlessness, was
incapable of working in Modi’s machine. That is how that behemoth—now
known as the Modi Swayamsevak Sangh or the mss—was built, by sidelining
the old guard of Advanis, Jaswant Singhs and Sushma Swarajs.
One
year before the formal announcement of the elections, Amit Shah, Modi’s
trusted aide, was sent to Uttar Pradesh. The target given to him was
60 seats out of 80. In 1998, the party had won 58 seats in Uttar
Pradesh. That was in the backdrop of violent polarisation between Hindus
and Muslims after the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Only that kind
of polarisation would overcome the caste divide in the state and revive
the Hindu wave so as to give the BJP 60 seats. The wave, it was hoped,
would then spread across Aryavarta. So it could be said the
Muzaffarnagar tragedy was not an accident. Shah’s language of revenge
and his references to historical events cannot be seen in isolation
from conscious efforts at polarisation.
Modi and his generals know that
if the BJP does not win at least 45 seats in Uttar Pradesh, his ambition
is doomed. That is precisely why the Congress should have thought of
fighting, along with anti-BJP alliances, to stop Modi at not more than
20 seats in Uttar Pradesh, that is, 40 less than the target he had given
Shah.
Proof
that the Modi strategy was at work came when the results of assembly
elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan were out: the
BJP won sensationally. But for the maverick Arvind Kejriwal and his
loose cannon aap, Delhi too could have gone to the BJP. The party was
short of just four seats. The Hindu wave had clearly begun to take root.
The disastrous performance of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh came
as a bonanza. After the victories in the assemblies in western India,
Modi’s lieutenants in the war room decided to concentrate only on the
120 seats in Uttar Pradesh (80) and Bihar (40). They had concluded: if
Uttar Pradesh is brought under the spell with 50-60 seats and Bihar with
25, then these two states together will contribute 75-80 (out of 120)
to the national tally. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and
Rajasthan will give 80 (out of 104), and if Maharashtra, Karnataka,
Himachal Pradesh and Delhi add 40 more seats, the tally would be 200.
But
while the Machiavellis were working overtime in Modi’s war room, what
stopped the Chanakyas from working in the Congress’s camp? The challenge
before the Congress was not to win that 206-seat bonanza again but to
stop the enemy at the gate. That unrealistic number had come in 2009
because of Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. It was quite clear after
the Telangana fiasco that the Telugus won’t come to its rescue again;
and Uttar Pradesh has not really been a Congress base since 1985.
Therefore,
if the Modi-led BJP crosses the 200 mark, it is entirely because of the
complacency and anaesthetic state that the Congress has been in. On the
other hand, if the Modi juggernaut is stopped at the gate with 170
seats, then it will be entirely because of the internecine wars within
the Sangh parivar. After all, it is a game of just 30 seats, not 543!
Veteran journalist Kumar Ketkar covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for the Business and Political Observer
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