Politics: The Modi Pill!

Narendra Modi has become the classic pill that still affects you irrespective of your decision to swallow or not to swallow it. If you ignore the pill you suffer from relapse; if you swallow it and then throw it out you still suffer from wrong diagnosis and if you swallow it with a contented heart you are still not sure of escaping from its side effects.  Greatly relishing the spectacle the Congress party already quipped that the very mention of Narendra Modi’s name had made many BJP stalwarts sick unable to attend Goa meet.

For a change media attention has somewhat shifted from the still raging IPL Spot Fixing scandal and has now been totally focused on Narendra Modi—the Chief Minister of Gujarat famous for his successful development model and arguably the most controversial leader within the national opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Recently there were a few opinion polls on General Elections-2014 that forecast that with Modi as the BJP campaign leader or a declared Prime Ministerial candidate the BJP would much better to possibly form a government at the centre. Besides, Modi has also done exceptionally well in the just concluded by-elections in Gujarat sweeping all the Parliament and Assembly seats. Narendra Modi cannot be ignored anymore. The two-day National Convention of the BJP started in Goa with a pre-Convention agenda meeting yesterday. It has been widely speculated and expected that the party would take a decision this time to make Modi BJP Election Campaign leader or BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate or both.

However, things are far from easy because Narendra Modi’s record of delivering stupendous growth rate and good governance always gets weighed against his fundamentalist leanings or connections and his dubious role during communal riots in his state in 2002. BJP being a party for Hinduism with tacit blessings from various fundamentalist groups notwithstanding, some leaders within its fold vouch for a secular changeover. It knows that it cannot form a government on its own in diverse India and has to play coalition politics for its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that brought BJP into power in 1998 and then in 1999. The NDA has other parties with secular ideologies and their own Prime Ministerial candidates too. Allies within the NDA has been fighting bitterly during the last two tumultuous years while cornering the ruling coalition again and again on new and newer scams and hardly allowing the Indian Parliament to perform. In this complex era of confrontational politics the basic reason for infighting is still Narendra Modi.

Several senior, competent and ambitious leaders within BJP make things murkier. There are two main groups—anti-Modi led by veteran LK Advani with the support of leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Shusma Swaraj, Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Venkaiyya Naidu etc, and the pro-Modi group led by BJP national President Rajnath Singh with the support of leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar, for BJP President Nitin Gadkari, Rajiv Pratap Rudi and others. Speculation has reached fever pitch with several anti-Modi BJP leaders including LK Advani deciding against attending Goa convention.

The BJP must understand that it must put up a Modified front, must present a tolerably united alliance and must desist from petty politics, if it seriously wants to aim at forming a government after the 2014 General Elections.