Prime Minister Narendra Modi never had it so good! Even in the face of a series of by-election reversals spread across eight states (counting Bihar which saw the successful emergence of a new Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad axis), Modi could eventually turn out to be the ultimate beneficiary. Fifty-one assembly seats went to polls in the past one month and the results were indeed a surprise, perhaps more so for the winners. And just as the dust settled in these states, two more - Maharashtra and Haryana - are getting ready for much fuller battles.
By-elections are usually tame affairs, compared to the fuller versions, be it for the state assembly or parliament. In most cases, the ruling party in the state has the upper hand thanks to much government machinery being put to use howsoever close the Election Commission may scrutinise. Hence the BJP was expected to win in Rajasthan and Gujarat, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Congress in Assam. Only in Uttar Pradesh, the key state for all practical purposes - be it state assembly or parliamentary elections - the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) looked ready to receive another drubbing in the wake of a series of rapes, riots and rebellions.
In the end, not one state went to script. While the SP in Uttar Pradesh won “for maximum government, minimum governance,” as one commentator put it, in Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal and Assam the respective party in power had to bite the dust for reasons, perhaps, other than governance. Curiously, in both scenarios, the results were a surprise. And with the exception of West Bengal, the surprise was most unpleasant for the BJP.
Be that as it may, it was the BJP’s loss in both Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan that caught the attention because Modi’s party was expected to make further inroads into the opposition citadels in the wake of its sweeping victory in the parliamentary polls. These expectations, however, were based on the so-called “Modi wave” which, in turn, was based on the development/governance agenda that Modi propagated so assiduously throughout the 437 election rallies he addressed all over the country. If the party itself had other ideas Modi never allowed it to take centre stage.
But having got to where he wanted, Modi seemed to have let the party have its run in the by-polls while he immersed himself in the role of becoming “a world statesman” (Farid Zakaria’s words). So, while the prime minister was busy travelling to Bhutan, Brazil and Japan and hosting a series of world leaders one after the other, his party took to its bad old ways of Muslim-baiting in the belief that it could consolidate the Hindu vote. It turns out that not only were the Hindus not buying it but the Muslims too seemed to have decided to return to square one, as it were, after a brief tête-à-tête with Modi.
The Uttar Pradesh campaign was led by a dyed-in-the-wool Hindu cleric and member of parliament in the shape of Yogi Adityanath and one of his first acts was to cry wolf against what was euphemistically termed “love jihad.” He alleged that young Hindu girls were being lured into marriage and conversion to Islam by motivated Muslim youth. Despite a court order against such blatantly polarising statements and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who hails from Uttar Pradesh and was till recently national president of the party, denying any knowledge of what “love jihad” meant, there was little let-up on ground. If that was not enough, another cleric of saffron persuasion, Sakshi Maharaj, also an MP from Uttar Pradesh, declared that the Muslim madrasas were not exactly teaching the Holy Qur’an but were indulging in the “education of terrorism.” Enough was enough; the Muslims seemed to say and promptly went back into the fold of their old faithful defender Mulayam Singh Yadav.
So how does this benefit Modi, you may ask. It may help him not just on one count, but two. First, as mentioned previously, by-elections are not the “real thing,” so to say. That is yet to come, in fact on October 15 in Haryana and Maharashtra. The present reversals can, therefore, act as a wake-up call for Modi and the BJP to spur them on to capture power in both these Congress-ruled states.
Second, as some analysts here suggest, Modi’s “one-man show” at the Centre has not gone down well with the rest of the party leadership. The sidelining of veterans like Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and, to some extent, Sushma Swaraj, was always going to come back to Modi. So the by-polls were a chance for the party to hit back at Modi and show that the ‘Hindutva’ agenda is alive and well and that if he could catapult himself to prime ministership on the slogan of “inclusive growth” and “minimum government, maximum governance,” etc., the party could do its own bit by harking back to its old, tried and tested ways. Modi was the star campaigner for the parliamentary polls in May. Three months down the line, Prime Minister Modi did not address a single rally in any of the states. And not just that, he also did not intervene when Aditynath and his ilk were breathing fire and brimstone.
Perhaps Modi himself was testing the waters to see if the’ Hindutva’ agenda still had any relevance. Or he was getting ready to go after the remnants of the old-guard in the party if it suffered election losses. Either way Modi seemed to be on the winning side! “BJP B-team delivers a dud” was the banner headline in one major daily from the capital, apparently suggesting that it was the party, and not Modi, that was to blame.
The party lost not just overwhelmingly in terms of the number of seats, but also in the percentage of votes polled in every state, including West Bengal where it won an election for the first time. Aspirational India struck back in very clear terms. It wants Modi to stay the straight and narrow path of development and not deviate into religious fundamentalism through saffron-robed politicos. Amit Shah says all aspects of the by-election defeat will be thoroughly examined. Actually, he wouldn’t need to exercise his grey matter much. Just ask his mentor, Modi. He knows!
Newsreader
loses job over
‘Eleven’ Jinping
No, I did not make this up. It actually happened!
But first a bit of preamble . When Shakespeare got Romeo to ask: “What’s in a name…?” he could not have foreseen the possibilities of modern day proper names creating confusion worse confounded. Dr No and Yahoo Serious are names that have become internationally famous but can still get eyebrows raised. Proper names of one nation can generate much mirth and bewilderment in another nation. So, when David and Victoria Beckham named their son Brooklyn, because that was where he was conceived, it left a lot of people, especially in Asia, in absolute wonder because though Brooklyn Beckham sounds nice in an alliterative way, there are places and cities on the globe that few parents would want to name their children after. The Beckhams, thankfully, were not in any of them at the given moment!
Chinese proper names, though their owners carry very serious visages, have been a source of merriment to many outside that country because of the phonetic connotations they carry in most parts. So, to the uninitiated, the mention of President Hu could naturally tend to be followed by a question mark.
And now to what happened in the Indian capital the other day.
Chinese President Xi Jinping had quite a successful visit of India, signing deals worth $20bn and dropping enough hints that the thorny issue of disputed borders should not come in the way of bilateral relations. Everything was just what the doctor ordered. And then the big faux pas. An early morning newsreader at the state-owned Doordarshan television channel declared in no uncertain terms that President Eleven Jinping - yes, you read it right, Eleven Jinping - and Prime Minister Modi had very fruitful talks on Indo-China ties.
Last heard, the newsreader was trying to unlearn all the Roman numerals she had learned by rote in school even as she was beseeching her bosses to lift the suspension imposed on her. With little success in both, one might add.