Asian Age. Jul 21, 2013
Modi and the big paintbrush
by Bharat Bhushan
Narendra Modi’s campaign, projecting him as the best choice for India’s next prime minister, seems to be unravelling. His public relations company should know that an election story which is either inconsistent or peaks too soon is no good for swaying the voters.
When Mr Modi began to be projected on the national stage, he held a certain appeal to the urban middle classes disillusioned with corruption and mis-governance. They thought that Mr Modi had a plan for reviving the economy, and bettering their living standards. For the urban youth, Mr Modi seemed to herald the promise of a bright future — better educational and job opportunities. These articulate sections of modern India were searching for an alternative at a time when all they saw around them was vile politicians with their hand in the till. Mr Modi was not seen as personally corrupt and shone like a star in the urban imagination.
However the strands of this campaign are coming unstuck. One reason could be that Mr Modi has failed to come up with any alternative policy which would lead to better economic growth. He has no known position on the sliding Indian rupee, the stagnant manufacturing sector, FDI in retail, insurance, defence, telecom, civil aviation or any other sector.
When he speaks of development, the emphasis is on efficiency — “single window clearance” and an industry friendly administration. Administra-tive efficiency, however, is different from an alternative growth model. Mr Modi has no such model. He talks of India not producing world class universities but, as his critics point out, he himself has not produced any such institution in Gujarat. Indeed, whatever educational excellence exists in Gujarat predates him. He bemoans Indian sportsmen not performing well at world events but does nothing to promote sporting excellence in Gujarat. Instead of offering a blue-print for the economy, higher education or excellence in sports, he only offers himself. This has now started becoming evident to the urban educated classes.
Sensing that his development story was petering out, Mr Modi has started buying electoral insurance, inventing new stories. Quite suddenly, he is being projected as a leader of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) — because he comes from the Ghanchi, or oil-presser, caste. This is bound to alienate the upper castes in states like UP and Bihar, where they make up the majority of the urban middle class, his key constituency. The upper castes have been marginalised or brought in as mere junior allies by the OBC parties of UP and Bihar and they resent their dominance. Their predominant memory is of suffering and neglect at the hands of the OBCs for the last two decades. Projecting Mr. Modi as an OBC leader sends out a negative signal to them.
Upper caste urban youngsters may not be overtly caste-conscious, but they nurture an acute sense of deprivation in opportunities for higher education and in government jobs because of the OBC quotas. An OBC turn in Mr Modi’s campaign will increase those insecurities.
The Congress has been quick to recognise the potential alienation of the upper castes because of this strategy. Perhaps this is why veteran Congress strategist Digvijaya Singh went on the front foot to proclaim his adherence to ritual orthodoxy. In one stroke he analytically separated Hinduism from Hindutva politics and indirectly pointed out that Mr Modi was not above dividing the Hindus.
Is Mr Modi also buying electoral insurance from his Hindutva constituency through his crude linguistic assault on Muslims, demanding a uniform civil code and reviving the Ayodhya issue? His statement about the Congress covering itself in the “burqa of secularism” or comparing the gravity of the state-sponsored genocide of Muslims in 2002 with a “kutte-ka-bachha” (“puppy” does not capture the abusive nature of the phrase) coming under a moving car, shows how he can slip into the communal mode.
If he is appealing to a die-hard communal Hindutva constituency then communal speech alone will not suffice. However, he is more constrained than ever before, to satisfy them. A repetition of the 2002 violence today will not only have national consequences but will also make him more of a pariah with the international community.
If he is trying to emulate what Mr L.K. Advani did to the electoral fortunes of the BJP between 1989 and 1996 through his comprehensive communalisation of the polity, he is unlikely to succeed. There are several differences between the situation in 1989 and 2013.
For one, the BJP leadership is not united behind Mr Modi as it was behind Mr Advani in 1989. Nor does he have the acumen of Mr Advani who was able to see the strategic limitations of divisive politics and yielded leadership to Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee. By playing on communal sentiment Mr Advani was able to take the BJP’s tally in the Lok Sabha from 85 in 1989 to 120 in 1991 and to 161 in 1996. He realised that to cross this limit, he needed the liberal and inclusive personality of Vajpayee who could forge alliances with other parties. It was this strategic shift in the BJP’s electoral strategy which led to alliances and a transfer of allies’ votes which brought a jump of 21 seats and the BJP scored an all-time high of 182 seats in 1996 (and repeated the tally in 1999).
Indian society has significantly changed. People are more concerned about the state of the economy and the educational and economic future of their children rather than aspiring to a Ram temple. Mr Modi had plugged into these aspirations briefly. However, he no longer seems to trust his own seemingly inclusive, even if ill-defined and pro-corporate, development platform. His communal training in the RSS pushes him to polarise voters along religious lines and local caste compulsions force him to don the mantle of an OBC leader. The net result is that he comes across as neither fish nor fowl.
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