Here is a shocking twist to the alleged church attack in Mangalore: the act of vandalism was the violent repercussion of r..
Congress pays for misrule, BJP needs a leader to capitalise

The latest round of assembly polls has decimated the Congress
Party throughout the country. Except in Manipur, where the party
managed to return to power, in all other states, the ruling
Congress party at the Centre was trounced comprehensively. The
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has gained Goa and managed to register
a good performance in Uttarakhand and Punjab but failed to improve
its fortunes in Uttar Pradesh.
While on the whole, the BJP has much to feel contended about, the
failure in Uttar Pradesh which sends 80 MPs to Parliament calls for
soul searching. It is important to analyse the factors that caused
this defeat in UP and learn lessons for future. Here is one such
attempt.
Lack of leadership in UP : In my assessment, the
fundamental reason for the below-par performance of the BJP and the
disastrous performance of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh is lack of
clarity on who would lead these parties in the event they came to
power. At a time when people are making voting choices increasingly
on the basis of a promise of good governance, they are not willing
to trust political parties as much as leaders with proven
credentials. The concept of collective leadership does not seem
appealing to the voters. The BJP would have been better off
choosing one of its strong leaders as a chief ministerial candidate
and strongly backing that candidate.
The BJP could have possibly bucked this trend of leaders emerging
as more important factors than parties had it staved itself off
ills like corruption and nepotism plaguing the politics today. Anna
Hazare movement against all political parties has made entire
political class look suspect in the eyes of the electorate.
Undoubtedly, the BJP still maintains a much higher bar of personal
integrity but the Congress-friendly English media has been
unleashing a vicious campaign against the BJP to tarnish its image
and square it up with the Congress.
That leadership is important in elections is borne out by the fact
that the BJP and allies did exceedingly well in states where they
projected a chief ministerial candidate. In the lone state of Uttar
Pradesh where the BJP relied on the concept of “collective
leadership,” it failed to enhance its performance. In my
assessment, had the BJP projected a leader of good standing, it
could have doubled its tally.
Inspirational Leadership : The Uttar Pradesh’s
humbling experience has some portends for the party’s bid for power
at the Centre in the next parliamentary elections. So far, the
party has maintained that it has five or six prime ministerial
candidates and was even toying with the idea of promoting
collective leadership. Going by the UP experience, it will simply
not work.
The BJP will have to pick its best leader with a mass appeal,
proven track record in governance and development and back him up
fully to achieve the best possible results. If the party fails to
do so quickly, the next election may irreversibly veer towards a
regional formation heading the government at the Centre. A number
of regional satraps like Mamata Banerjee, Naveen Patnaik,
Chandrababu Naidu and even Nitish Kumar are working towards a
Regional Front-led government at the Centre.
Yearning for Gujarat-like Governance : Besides
projecting inspirational leadership in the next parliamentary
polls, the BJP should focus on enhancing its appeal as a party of
good governance and appeal to the masses particularly the youth who
are sick of old style caste and community politics. Even as the
Congress gets mired in Muslim appeasement politics, BJP should
focus on its governance successes in different states. The most
prominent among them is Gujarat where its Chief Minister Narendra
Modi has won many elections on the strength of his government’s
performance and is likely to score a resounding victory when the
state goes to polls later this year.
# The states send a final warning message
to BJP
# Uttar Pradesh voter Packs off (white)
Elephants
Narendra Modi’s development record and corruption-free governance
model have caught the imagination of the whole country and the
world. Even his Congress rivals and critics acknowledge his
unparalleled governance successes in Gujarat on several fronts:
agriculture, industry, infrastructure and utilities like power and
water supply.
The whole nation and all sections of the populace are yearning for
Gujarat-like governance in the country. This is what was reflected
in the India Today’s Mood of the Nation poll which found that
nearly one-fourth (24 per cent) of voters across the country rooted
for Narendra Modi as the country’s next Prime Minister while only
18 per cent supported Rahul Gandhi for the top job. The poll
indicates that the declining fortunes of Rahul Gandhi are a
nationwide phenomenon and not confined to Uttar Pradesh where he
had just received a resounding drubbing. In what the media sees as
a Rahul Gandhi vs. Narendra Modi battle in 2014 parliamentary
polls, Narendra Modi has already trounced Rahul in public
perceptions. Critics who say that Narendra Modi won’t work outside
Gujarat are simply terrified by the potential impact of Narendra
Modi at the national level.
Obsession with Muslim vote harms BJP : There are
some misconceptions that some analysts keep pontificating over in
the media to obfuscate and confound the BJP’s thinking and
electoral strategies. The biggest myth circulated by them is that
the party must do everything to divide the Muslim vote as this will
result in windfall gains for the BJP. This premise, aggressively
circulated in Uttar Pradesh, has been proved to be utterly
fallacious.
This “divide Muslim vote strategy” has made the party obsessive
about the need to neutralise the Muslim vote and has diverted the
party’s focus from emerging as a party committed to good
governance, development and non-appeasement. Limited successes in
winning a couple of minority dominant seats can hardly be seen to
vindicate this flawed strategy.
Even as this Muslim vote strategy failed to pay off the BJP
electorally, it had the unintended consequence of facilitating
election of as many as 68 Muslim MLAs to the Uttar Pradesh
assembly.
The flawed thinking about the Muslim vote is due to a mistaken
belief (or propagated belief) that tactical voting by Muslims was
mainly responsible for the defeat of the BJP in parliamentary
elections in 2004 and 2009. This analysis is bereft of any
evidence. The reality is that the Muslims have never voted for the
BJP in any election ever and the success of the BJP in the 1996,
1998 and 1999 parliamentary elections was achieved despite vehement
opposition from the Muslims from all over the country.
Rather than (dis)crediting Muslims for its defeat in 2004 and 2009
polls, the BJP should realize that the defeat was a result of
losing the support of the ideologically committed and its inability
to meet the aspirations of some electoral groups. The non-existent
Muslim factor is over-simplification of the mandates lost in 2004
and 2009.
Using the same alibi, many BJP critics and pseudo intellectuals
raise the bogie of minority votes to ground Narendra Modi in
Gujarat. In politics, every party operates in an ideological
framework and that is what people identify it with. Every
action and decision must be in consonance with that persona lest it
should suffer dilution and cause ideological confusion. The BJP is
known for its policy of non-appeasement of Muslims and this core
value cannot be compromised.
As the Congress fortunes begin to crash, the BJP has to move in
fast and present effective leadership to capitalize on public
sentiment. As mid-term elections appear likely, the party must get
down to taking important decisions for the mega parliamentary
battle.
By GVL Narasimha Rao
(The author is a noted Psephologist and political analyst.)
Organiser
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