Why BJP's new Bihar president is like the new Rs 2,000 note
As the year nears its end, picking the best and the worst of the months on various parameters is par for the course. And though there are still some days left in 2016, November stands as the one that broke the slumber.
In fact, the month threw up the most shocking of surprises on November 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared demonetisation and Donald Trump romped home to victory in the US.
November 30 may take the next place in the pecking order of surprises. This was the day the Supreme Court ordered that the national anthem be played before screening of every film, and the BJP central leadership picked its horses for courses to break the sound barrier in Bihar and Delhi.
The BJP has picked two new state presidents, Nityanand Rai for Bihar and Manoj Tiwari for Delhi. Both first-timers in the Lok Sabha are expected to resurrect the saffron party in the two states where it faced its worst drubbing since Modi government took over at the Centre.
In February 2015, the BJP could win just three of the total 70 seats in the Delhi Vidhan Sabha. Eight months later, the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad combine decimated the BJP in Bihar, reducing it to 53 seats in the 243-member House.
The BJP’s gameplan for Bihar, if not the strategy, makes some sense. It is pinning hopes on Rai, a formidable Yadav leader, to helm the party and chip away Lalu's hold on the 15 per cent Yadav constituents of the state.
But the elevation of Tiwari - who inarguably sings better than he dances or acts (as is evident in numerous Bhojpuri flicks) - to spearhead the ruling party in the nation’s capital is indeed a revelation.
Expected to win his electoral spurs in Delhi, where AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal decimated the BJP last year, Tiwari has started on the expected lines by deciding to distribute laddoos to counter the bitter taste of the demonetisation drive.
Will the laddoos please Delhi dwellers and make them forget demonetisation hardships or their other struggles?
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| The BJP has nobody but Sushil Kumar Modi to match Nitish Kumar's stature and articulation. (Photo: India Today) |
Not many points for answering this but clearly, Tiwari, like the various characters he played in numerous Bhojpuri movies, seems hooked on quick-fixes; high on spunk but low on substance.
The last Assembly polls saw the BJP at its weakest in Delhi; and even the seeming masterstroke of bringing Kiran Bedi out of nowhere could not cut any ice. If Tiwari thinks laddoos can act as saffron magnets for the harried Delhi denizens, he obviously is borrowing too much from his reel life script.
Just seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, however, may not matter much for Modi’s bid for a second term in office in 2019. But Bihar will surely be crucial, a state where the NDA bagged 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general elections.
Having won four successive Assembly polls before romping home in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, 50-year-old Rai is a formidable Yadav leader, who is being projected as BJP’s Yadav alternative to Lalu’s sons, Tejasvi and Tej Pratap.
The two sons incidentally have constituencies in the Vaishali region of north Bihar, which is also known as Rai’s political turf. This brings out an uncomfortable fact for the BJP - that notwithstanding his home ground, Rai was still no match to Lalu when they jostled against each other to claim the Yadav legacy.
But, there is still some hope for BJP. The two elections in Bihar, the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2015 Assembly polls, saw spectacular polarisations. If Modi’s wave swept the Lok Sabha polls, it was the Nitish-Lalu combine that outdid the NDA in the Assembly election, each alternatively reducing the other to insignificance.
BJP clearly hopes that Rai will grow in stature to stand up to Lalu and his two sons in 2019. That may happen then, but as of now BJP's new state president looks like the new Rs 2,000 currency note, loaded with value and potential both but one which does not find many takers now across retail outlets.
Mangal Pandey, the upper caste Brahmin leader Rai has replaced as Bihar state BJP president, was like the Rs 100 currency note, which though not demonetised and therefore always useful, has been run-of-the-mill; functional and available, but never packing a punch.
Things have been stewing up on a slow boil for the BJP in Bihar for long. Since the Grand Alliance of Nitish-Lalu and Congress crushed the BJP in the 2015 Assembly election, winning 178 seats and reducing the NDA to 58; the saffron leadership has been in slow motion: making noises but doing nothing.
Though his tenure finished shortly after the Bihar Assembly polls, the party leadership allowed Mangal Pandey to lumber on for 11 months. Instead of soul-searching and switching back to action mode, the BJP - just when it should have been seen taking the next leap - earned the reputation that it can’t be trusted to stand up to the combined might of Lalu and Nitish.
And that’s a dangerous situation for a party hoping not only to retain pole position in the Lok Sabha but also a viable alternative to the Nitish-Lalu team in Bihar.
The problem for the BJP in Bihar is not Lalu, but Nitish Kumar; though the entire saffron strategy has always revolved around the RJD boss. Lalu always had Yadav voters. But he alone failed to make the mark.
Contesting alone and also in alliance with the Congress, Lalu failed to ensure victory for the RJD and lost five consecutive elections, from the 2005 Assembly polls to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He made a difference only when he came together with Nitish in 2015.
Since then, all opinion polls have shown Nitish miles ahead of others as the choice for Bihar CM’s post.
The BJP has nobody but Sushil Kumar Modi to match Nitish's stature and articulation. But, instead of empowering the feisty Modi from Bihar, the irony is that the party leadership seems more inclined to marginalise him.
The denial of a Rajya Sabha berth to Sushil Modi, which could have paved the way for his elevation as a Union minister and thus placed him on an equal footing with Nitish is a case in point.
Having been credited on a par with Nitish in the past for Bihar’s turnaround, Sushil Modi is the only BJP leader who can challenge Nitish on his record of governance in Bihar. He can also make things difficult for the Grand Alliance with his well-researched questions. However, many in the party now believe Rai’s elevation as Bihar BJP president will further dilute Sushil Modi’s influence.
The last time the BJP bagged some Yadav votes in Bihar, Manmohan Singh was the PM and everybody expected Pakistan to crawl if India elected Narendra Modi to succeed the economist Prime Minister.
The Lok Sabha election saw a change of guard in Delhi. But the Yadavs too have changed in Bihar since then. Nityanand Rai clearly has a mountain to climb.