What Nitin Patel’s rebellion against Modi and Amit Shah has exposed
For more than three and half years, we have been living under the shadow and snare of the strong leader. A carefully crafted strategy has been woven around him within the party and outside to crown him with the mantle of invincibility.
The electoral losses in Bihar and Delhi in the early days did entirely dent the image of Narendra Modi as an unchallenged vote-catcher. And the damage was repaired later with an astonishing win in Uttar Pradesh.
All the while Modi’s stature within the BJP remained unassailable. Until recently after the Gujarat Assembly elections as the state deputy chief minister Nitin Patel sounded a bugle of revolt.
On his home turf, Modi managed to snatch an electoral victory for the BJP from the jaw of a staring defeat. Congress president Rahul Gandhi had a partial success.
But what Rahul Gandhi failed to do or managed to partially achieve, BJP’s own Nitin Patel has done. He has given Modi and the party president Amit Shah a jolt.
Nitin Patel has busted the strong leader’s myth in Gujarat and within the BJP. Within days of being denied the portfolios of his choice - finance, urban development and petrochemicals, the departments he held in the previous government - he brought the strongmen of Gujarat to their knees. Shah hurried to assuage Nitin Patel and the department of finance was given back to him.
Patel used the same tactics to force Modi and Shah to concede to his demand as Modi had used to win the recent Gujarat elections. It’s the issue of self-respect and dignity or asmita (in Hindi), which many leaders in states have used in the past to bring down strong leaders in Delhi. The issue of "asmita" is raised typically when a strong local leader is slighted by Delhi’s strongmen.
Nitin Patel was not coy about sending open signals of revolt. That’s very unlike the culture within the BJP, which manages dissidence within the party through well-settled mechanism of coercion and cooption. It’s especially true of the leaders who come up from the RSS ranks. They are trained in obedience.
So, why did Nitin Patel rebel and why the BJP chief bent over backwards to accommodate him?
Firstly, Patel knew he stood on a firm ground. During two days of his sulk, Patel or Patidar leaders came out all guns blazing in his support. Hardik Patel and Congress leaders took potshots at Modi and Shah.
Secondly, and more importantly, Nitin Patel knew that Modi and Shah were on thin ice in once-invincible Gujarat. With 99 members in the 182-member Assembly, the BJP has a wafer-thin majority. The Congress, with 77 members having a good chunk of Patel legislators and, with Hardik Patel’s support among the Patidars, is breathing down the BJP’s neck.
But more ominous is the fact that Nitin Patel’s rebellion was the first by any state leader against Modi and Shah after the BJP’s 2014 rollercoaster victory. Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha have been taking potshots at Modi and Shah, but they can’t do the damage that Nitin Patel is capable of.
The Nitin Patel episode was not a storm in a tea cup. It points to the weakness and fallibility of the Modi model of governance.
The model is a leaf taken out of Indira Gandhi’s book. One can understand Modi’s temptation to model himself after Indira Gandhi, described as the only man in her Cabinet. Modi loves to see himself in the image of a strongman.
After having worsted the powerful Congress syndicate, Indira Gandhi developed a penchant for appointing party weaklings - men without strong base and mass appeal - as state chief ministers. Powerful state leaders were sidelined.
Modi began to emulate her in this respect from the beginning. Most of the chief ministers appointed by him and Shah have been men and women without strong base and mass appeal. They are Modi and Amit Shah’s "yes-men".
Anandiben Patel and now Vijay Rupani in Gujarat, Raghubar Das in Jharkhand, Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana and Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra fit in with Modi’s model of "yes-CMs.
The criteria for their appointment have been loyalty to the leader, not capability. Governance has been put on the backburner.
Modi’s charisma and Shah’s election management have won almost all the states for the BJP since 2014. But Gujarat showed that charisma can fade and the booth management can falter. In the absence of a mass local leader, the party’s famed election machinery has no fall back system in place.
The states scheduled to have elections in 2018 - Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will be tough for Modi and Shah. Though the BJP has two strong leaders in Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh in Bhopal and Raipur respectively, they will be facing strong anti-incumbency sentiments. The Modi model will be put to the toughest test there.
Within two years of Modi leaving Gujarat, the model of "yes-CMs" had begun crashing to the ground. It started with the fall of Anandiben Patel in 2016. Although a Patidar, she was a leader of no consequence.
One expected the BJP to appoint a Patidar as her successor to stem the Hardik Patel tide, but the Modi-Shah model demanded that a weakling like Rupani be enthroned. Again despite the Assembly election shock in December, Rupani was chosen over a powerful satrap, Nitin Patel.
Nitin Patel’s brief rebellion has exposed the chinks in the Modi-Shah armour. It’s a reminder that Indira Gandhi's model of strongman in Delhi choosing state leaders for loyalty over capability, subservience over leadership can prove fatal. After all, the Indira Gandhi model failed, which led to the weakening of the Congress.
While aping Indira Gandhi, Modi must keep in mind the curse of the strong leader.