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Can U.P follow Bihar model in 2017 poll

By Lalit Sethi. Dated: 11/23/2015 9:35:10 AM

Within a week of BJP's rout in Bihar, the appetite to defeat the saffron party in other States of India has grown. U.P., which goes to the polls in early 2017 or in a little more than a year from now, the call to defeat Mr. Narendra Modi now has a ring of confidence.
Mr. Modi's claim to fame was that he built up Gujarat from a scratch, from a backward State to a forward looking one. Drums rolled to that beat. He invested his authority on that mantra. His party might have won in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, but with little fanfare.
But much more than in those three States, he threw himself body and soul into the Delhi and Bihar election campaigns. He was the principal opponent of the local satraps in these elections. His efforts yielded almost nothing. It was as good as dud.
Will he repeat the Delhi and Bihar blunders in U.P., West Bengal, Asom or Tamil Nadu? Perhaps his think tanks will advise him to keep his showmanship and oratory to near zero.
There are unlikely to be flourishes of an omnipresent or omnipotent leader. There may well be downsizing of the social media reach-out to the masses. Is the factor of diminishing returns already evident?
The BJP and RSS both engaged themselves in excessive Hindutva slogans and questioning the plural nature of India. They have yet to realize that the Indian scriptures and epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata are not the exclusive preserve of Hindus, who may be spiritualists, but they do not invoke religious dos and don'ts at the drop of a hat.
Will Mr. Modi now personally reprimand the loud mouths in his party and government and consider dropping some of them from his Council of Ministers as they have done enormous damage to his prestige as Prime Minister?
The question being asked in BJP circles is where are the 100 million new members of the BJP whom Mr. Amit Shah recruited this year. They were expected to go from village to village, from door to door in town and country. But they were missing in the Bihar elections.
Were they paper tigers or not even the mewing little cats? They did not go to the voters or potential voters. Or were they given the cold shoulder if they knocked at a door or doors?
Will the RSS and rank and file of the party demand that heads should roll for the Bihar wash-out? Should those responsible for BJP being outflanked and defeated in constituency after constituency in Bihar quit or be forced to quit as leaders of the party?
Leave alone, the party elders in their 80s or approaching 90, the younger ones, boys and girls, men and women must be wondering whether they had tagged themselves on to the coat tails of the wrong party, a party without a future for itself or for them.
Is there a ghost of a chance for positions, jobs or going up in the party hierarchy or being able to curry favour with money bags or captains of industry and commerce? The Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, might have gone away immediately to London to receive lusty cheers and ovation of Indians overseas at Wembley Stadium. That might be excellent for his ego, but does it translate into votes within India in the upcoming elections in five or six States?
Does it or will it translate into filling the coffers of the ruling party by Indian citizens settled overseas? That hope or desire is not even being entertained, but doubts are already springing up like over-ripe fruit or bananas or even stale sweets left over after Diwali. A hitherto deflated Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is turning 76 on November 22, and his son, Akhilesh Yadav, both of whom had gone into slumber after rejecting the Bihar Mahagadbandhan or the alliance steamrolling the Bihar polling booths, have had a rude shock or an awakening.
Both of them might not benefit from that alliance because it is quite marginal in U.P. They need to woo Mayawati, the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and their eternal foe, who may well refuse to listen to approaches of collaboration with the Samajwadi Party. But they might remain on the grind.
Although she drew a blank in the General Election to the Lok Sabha in the summer of 2014, she has more than 80 members in the U.P. Assembly even today. That makes her some kind of a force to reckon with. But it is clear whether Mulayam or his son or Mayawati make or fail to make a dent in the sweepstakes in Uttar Pradesh, they are all dreaming at the moment that their tormentor, the BJP, is also in the wilderness from now on.
They know that the great Vikas Purush, who has been promising Indians that they will be lifted out of their misery and poverty with a flourish have gained nothing in the past 18 months of Narendra Modi raj, nor for that matter the ruler himself.
A hundred million new bank accounts might have been opened under the Jana Dhana Yojana, but has any government money gone into them? Ninety per cent of them are known to be sleeping accounts, with possibly half or more of them still with a zero balance.
As if to rub in salt into the wounded BJP after Bihar, two RSS frontal organizations, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh have tried to rock the boat of the government by saying it has acted in haste by easing foreign direct investment in 15 new sectors. They have threatened mass agitations if the decisions are not rolled back as FDI is not a panacea for India.
—[IFS]