![]() Why House standoff helps both Modi and Rahul - not the Cong or Oppn.With two-thirds of India keeping its distance from the BJP in state elections, it will be of immense interest how far the party can continue to push its agenda. It sees electoral ascendance as a licence to alter the nature of India and the character of the Constitution. But the BJP’s problem - and the problem caused by it - goes much beyond this. Success brings arrogance and insensitivity. But the moment they show willingness to engage the BJP in an authentic manner, the party’s achievement will shrink. They will have to acquiesce into the new normal of violence, hatred and illiberal law-enforcement - they will have to be more like the BJP in order to fight it. And this achievement means that non-BJP parties will have to play by the new rules set by the BJP. This is something not even Indira Gandhi could do during the heyday of her authoritarian rule. It has rewritten the Constitution without having to make any amendment to it. When we look back at the past six months, bringing a fundamental change to India’s identity will emerge as the single most effective thing the BJP did in this period. In the past six months, the BJP has effectively steered the agenda of public decision-making. More recently, it has successfully managed to legislate its agenda into public policies. In its first term, through issues of cow-protection and instances of mob vigilantism, the party was able to keep its agenda on the front burner. During the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections and after that, unemployment, the slowdown in the economy and issues related to livelihood could barely make their presence felt. But a cursory look at today’s public debates would show how successful the BJP has been in setting the agenda. The party has gone down from being in office in two-thirds of India two years ago to just a little over a third of the country today. This takes us to the fourth yardstick to assess the party: How far has it been successful in setting an agenda and pushing it towards a direction desired by it? Here, we confront a complex picture. It has managed to convince a large section of Hindu society to understand politics through the prism of imaginary Hindu interests. The BJP’s efforts to gain acceptability by building a Hindutva political identity has also been successful. The moment Modi flounders, this chunk of popularity could diminish. ![]() This source of popularity is crucial as much as it is risky. So long as the PM’s personal popularity remains relatively high, the party can bask in reflected glory. Much of the addition to the BJP’s popularity has been Modi’s contribution. The other reason for the party’s popularity is Modi himself. One is the party’s organisational reservoir of support. Yet, it would be unrealistic to deny the diffused popularity enjoyed by the BJP. The new supporters of the party may look for alternatives and as state elections indicate, these are rather discerning supporters who are willing to switch to state parties during state elections. Retaining popular acceptability, however, is going to be a tough task because over the past two parliamentary elections, the BJP has added a large number of supporters to its core base - who are around 20 per cent at most. Politics, though, is never a straightforward enterprise and the BJP can still find comfort in the fact that it continues to be fairly popular - the public may be disappointed with the government’s performance but not disenchanted with the party. Having taken recourse to all these, this government is increasingly resorting to semi-repressive and clearly repressive measures to hide its non-performance. Subterfuge, sleight of hand and excessive propaganda are the techniques of non-performing governments. Third, if governance is judged on its democratic dimension, the BJP government has gone from bad to worse in its second term. The governance failure, thus, tantamounts to a breach of trust - and becomes colossal. This failure is even more glaring if one takes into account the enormous trust the voters placed in Narendra Modi despite the economy not doing well in May 2019. ![]() Two, if the economy is any indication, the abysmal failure on the governance front is apparent, particularly for a party that came to power originally promising better times. This includes even the states where the BJP has been ruling without allies - Haryana before 2019, UP and Karnataka today. ![]() One, the states run by the BJP are not better governed than those run by non-BJP parties. Can the BJP boast of an improved governance record? While opinions on governance in states where the party holds office are bound to be deeply divided, at least three things are clear. ![]()
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