Delhi polls: Five lessons the BJP must learn from its campaign

#1. The BJP in states has too many leaders, not enough leadership. It needs to nominate regional leaders and allow them to grow, as it did in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. As a result, in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi, the party has had to rely on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fight its battles. The party got lucky in Haryana and Maharashtra, but it cannot expect every state to fight elections without local leadership. Importing it at the last minute, as it did in Delhi with Kiran Bedi, is not the solution. Even if Bedi wins, she will have as many problems adjusting to the party as it will have adjusting to her.

#2. The country wants a prime minister to be in permanent governance mode, not in perennial campaign mode. The prime minister has for too long been expected to spearhead his party's electoral strategy across India. Even for someone with as fabled a work ethic as he, it is a superhuman task. On May 16, candidate Modi became Prime Minister Modi. That is what India voted for, and that is what India wants. Why should Modi magic be subjected to continuous electoral evaluation. Now it needs to be tested in government.

#3. The BJP made the battle personal. Its targeting of Arvind Kejriwal, one of the co-founders of a movement the RSS was deeply sympathetic to, was a bad move. The print advertisements against him are tasteless, the attacks on funding have come too late, and the arraying of firepower against him seems overwhelming enough to evoke sympathy even in those who are suspicious of the Aam Aadmi Party's somewhat outlandish promises. With heavyweights like Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal firing at him on a daily basis, it's the equivalent of a missile strike being used to target a mosquito. It also meant that Modi had to attack Kejriwal personally, which is not what prime ministers are expected to do.

#4. The party missed a gigantic opportunity to be in sync with the government. The government speaks of smart cities. Delhi is a city that is yearning to be one. Why did the BJP campaign not focus on that one point agenda? Give us five years, the party could have said, and we will give you India's first smart city. All it needed was a comprehensive blueprint. It didn't need Kiran Bedi's evolving blueprint, or her party's 35-point (or was it 37-point?) vision document. It could have also aligned its Swachh Bharat campaign to the Delhi elections. It unfortunately has the result of making the prime minister's pet projects of Swachh Bharat and smart cities seem insincere.

#5. The BJP seemed opportunistic. For a cadre-based party, that is a cardinal error. Here is a party that flaunts its well-oiled cadre machine. The cadre works because they believe it is meritocratic. That they too have the opportunity to go from karyakarta to karta dharta. They have seen enough examples of leaders rising through the ranks, the latest of whom is Narendra Modi. Why would they undermine that by handing the keys to the kingdom to an outsider - not only to the party but to politics itself?