Pessimistic anti-Narendra Modi watchers are devastated at yet another saffron sweep, this time in Delhi’s municipal corporation elections. In the days gone by, this small urban poll would not have warranted more than inside page coverage, but then the political battleground was a lot less complicated and more easygoing than what it is today.
While sage writers are bemoaning the lack of any serious opposition to the Modi juggernaut, and the importance of a cohesive and effective opposition for the well-being of democracy, a closer inspection would reveal that while the prime minister is in a league of his own, there are players on the national scene, who could make a difference, given time and patience.
The most premature appears to be epitaphs written for AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, who seems to be battling his awesome record in the 2015 Delhi assembly elections.
Still, the AAP won 20 assembly seats in Punjab, a state where the party did not exist in the state assembly. Experts appear to be getting carried away by Kejriwal’s own claims that AAP would sweep the polls in Punjab. But establishing yourself in a new state – that too a border state – is no mean achievement, looked at from a neutral standpoint.
In the Delhi MCD polls, the AAP was hammered as compared to the 67/70 seats it scored in the Delhi assembly, yet the fact is that the diminutive former income tax officer did manage to get into second position relegating Congress to the third place. And there were some pretty close calls, mind you. In the closest fight in the Delhi civic polls, an AAP candidate lost to her BJP rival by exactly two votes. Pinky Tyagi of AAP bagged 8,413 votes to BJP’s Anita Tanwar’s 8,415 in a south Delhi ward.
Sure, the AAP was way behind the BJP, but all indications suggest that they are more likely to eat into the Congress vote bank than any other party.
The big problem with Kejriwal has been his inability to differentiate between politics and policy. In the course of an election campaign, attacking a rival is considered fair game, the language and grammar chosen for the assault, no matter how distasteful, can still pass muster.
Once elected, the campaign becomes a thing of the past. The demands of the office are entirely different. You have to work in a team, coordinate with the Centre no matter how much you dislike the ruling party. There is little scope for annoying the bureaucracy, which presides over the execution of policy. The scope for a chief minister to attack the prime minister on a daily basis, has little place in the kind of Westminster system that India has adopted.
The Delhi chief minister seems to have missed that point entirely. In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee appears to be sitting pretty, where the Trinamool Congress retained the Kanthi Dakshin assembly seat in East Midnapore comfortably by over 42,000 votes, a significant number given the close fights in state assemblies these days.
The only discordant note, as far as Mamata is concerned, is the slow but steady rise of the BJP, which came a distant second,
relegating Congress to
the margins. As for the Left, its candidate lost his
deposit, a telling comment on more than three decades of Communist rule in
the state. If there is one
fact that goes against
Mamata’s larger national ambitions, it is her lack of command over Hindi, which is a must for anyone wanting to conquer the Hindi heartland of UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan, and holds good for smaller states like Punjab, Himachal, Delhi and other areas in north India.
Nonetheless, Mamata and Kejriwal are in regular touch, planning and plotting for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. And they could be joined by others like Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, who has given a clarion call for a ‘mahagathbandhan’ or a grand poll alliance to stop the BJP in the next Lok Sabha elections.
Add to it a potpourri of powerful regional chieftains like Odisha’s Navin Patnaik, the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and remnants of the CPM in Kerala and elsewhere, and it could be a reasonably formidable opposition that the BJP has to contend with, at least on paper.
If we also take into account other influential chieftains from the cow belt like the Yadavs in UP and Bihar and BSP chief Mayawati, down and out as they may appear, always have the ability to stage a comeback. In other words, a number of large states in the country still have powerful rival satraps in power. It just needs a fire to ignite and the point here is whether they can get their act together.
What goes in Modi’s favour are their own individual ambitions and devotion to the cause of their state, which often comes at the cost of a larger national perspective. So far, benumbed by Modi’s onslaughts, they are lying comatose, but it just needs a good doctor to pull them out of ICU.
For the first time in her life, Mayawati has decided to drop her hauteur and hinted as obliquely as she can, that even a loose alliance with archrival of over two decades, Samajwadi Party, could be considered.
Maybe it has come late – a little too late - after the UP assembly results were declared, but the fact remains that somewhere the nickel has dropped. When it comes to backing your instincts for self-survival, there is no one cannier than a politician.
ranjitbhushan@mydigitalfc.com
