India: Gadkari leads secret mission to draft BJP's 'vision document'

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Gadkari leads secret mission to draft BJP's 'vision document'

By Saurabh Shukla

PUBLISHED: 22:29 GMT, 18 July 2013 | UPDATED: 22:29 GMT, 18 July 2013

BJP leader Narendra Modi (pictured) has his eye on the BJP's poll rankings, while Nitin Gadkari has been pulling together a 'vision document'

A brand new avatar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in the works. Former BJP president Nitin Gadkari is leading a secret exercise to draft a vision document for the party ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, even as saffron poster boy Narendra Modi embarks on Mission New Delhi.

Over the last two months, Gadkari has had a series of meetings with leading public intellectuals and academics in connection with the vision document.

He is known to have met Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Rajiv Kumar, a senior fellow with the CPR (formerly associated with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations), and Bibek Debroy, a professor at CPR.

Dr Ramgopal Agarwala, a senior adviser to the World Bank, is also part of this forum.

The BJP's refurbished statement of purpose is meant to bring to the fore the party's agenda on governance, public policy, energy security, bureaucracy, corruption, economic growth and issues that impact good governance.

"We have an open house and we talk to everybody across the political spectrum if they request us for ideas, but the CPR as an institution doesn't support any political party," Mehta, a key participant in the exercise, told Mail Today.

The exercise aims to touch the middle class and urban voters in order to demonstrate that the BJP has ideas that affect them and impact on governance. Rajiv Kumar agreed that his advice has been sought by BJP leaders and that he has provided the necessary inputs.

Bibek Debroy told Mail Today that this is the second such exercise in the last few months.
With the times

He said: "The earlier exercise was completed six months ago. This was done at the behest of a corporate titan and was a strategy doctrine for the BJP. I helped in its drafting. We looked at the imponderables before the BJP, evaluated it and prepared a blueprint for the future.

"The present exercise according to Debroy is completely different, is brand new, and deals with a new vision for the BJP."

Sources say some academics questioned the credibility of the party at a recent closed door session held with Gadkari, given its communal mould. One speaker reminded the BJP leaders that if they wanted to connect with the real urban India, they may have to shun the ideas of right-wing icons like Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar for more progressive ideas.

"It was a very, very serious exercise, and the effort is to take the BJP on the path of the 21st century," one of the participants told Mail Today.

Governance has been a dominant theme of the effort, but it does gel with Gujarat Chief Minister Modi's ideas. For instance, the BJP wants to reform the Planning Commission that Modi has criticised frequently, seeking ideas to re-engineer it.

BJP ideologue Vinay Sahasrabuddhe is part of the think-tank preparing the vision document. Last month, Modi was the chief guest at the launch of his book Beyond a Billion Ballots. Opinion remains divided, however, among those who have participated in the brainstorming.

"We have told them clearly we don't want our name to be associated with the effort. A vision document should essentially talk about the stand of the party, and cannot be done by intellectuals," said one of the participants who did not want to be named.

BJP insiders say the language spoken by these intellectuals reflects the predominant thinking of the urban middle class. The whole exercise is being backed by two corporate biggies; one is a Rajya Sabha member and the other is a construction magnate from Maharashtra.

The underlying theme is that the vision document will act like sails for Modi's armada that is looking to dock at 7 Race Course Road. That it is being anchored by Nitin Gadkari means it has the backing of the RSS. The Congress is not impressed.

"The practice of politics cannot be invigorated by theory, it is a dynamic that functions on the compassion of people," said Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tiwari, in a veiled attack on Modi.

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