Delhi polls: Why BJP should have read Malcolm Gladwell
Amit Shah is a master strategist who is known to practice statecraft learned from Arthashastra. Perhaps one book he should have read before plunging into elections in Delhi is Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, which shows how small but powerful movements overcome gigantic obstacles - whether it was the strategy adopted by associates of Martin Luther King Jr during the struggle for American civil liberties or the battle between Catholics and Protestants in the Irish conflicts. As Gladwell says, "Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness".
He says how the legendary Moshe Dayan — the architect of Israel’s astonishing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War — also wrote an essay on the story of David and Goliath in the Valley of Elah, noting how “David fought Goliath not with inferior but (on the contrary) with superior weaponry; and his greatness consisted not in his being willing to go out into battle against someone far stronger than he was. But in his knowing how to exploit a weapon by which a feeble person could seize the advantage and become stronger”.
Arguing about how David beat Goliath in the Valley of Elah, Gladwell says the little man did so because the giant had no peripheral vision. Goliath, points out Gladwell, probably suffered from acromegaly, a disease of the pituitary gland associated with gigantism, which restricted fields of vision. So what David lost in power, he made up for in mobility, using his superior footwork, to hurl a stone from his sling with all his might. It hit Goliath in the centre of his forehead, Goliath fell on his face to the ground, and David cut off his head. Of course, David then went on to become the king of Israel. There's no such danger here, for now, of Arvind Kejriwal coming to power at the centre, but the BJP will have to realise six things:
#1. It cannot use the powers of a behemoth to fight against a nimble challenger. If the opponent has a sling, you cannot use a missile, which in this case was the might of the Union Cabinet, with ministers deployed on the ground and in TV studios. The result: it made Kejriwal look increasingly like the common man he wanted to be, and it made its prime minister look like a VIP - hobnobbing with world leaders, jetsetting in helicopters and wearing expensive suits. Odd, given the party had spent well over a year in the run-up to the General Elections, highlighting his extraordinary rise from tea seller to chief minister.
#2. It has to allow regional leaders to take root before they flourish. If indeed the BJP was confident of Kiran Bedi, it should have deployed her immediately after the General Elections, allowing both her and the party to get used to each other, as I wrote last week in DailyO.
#3. It underestimated Kejriwal's appeal to the middle class, assuming they would not like to vote for an anarchist. The middle class abhors chaos, but it loves democracy more. And it knows for a democracy to flourish, powerful checks and balances are needed.
#4. It chose its moment wrong. Like David got time to observe his opponents, by coming repeatedly to the battlefield with food for his brothers, Kejriwal used the breather between May 2014 and February 2015 well, watching his opponents closely. In politics as in life, there is always more than one chance. Kejriwal grabbed it with both hands. The more he apologised, the more he looked winnable.
#5. It needs more youthful faces. In the General Elections, Modi was the youth icon, triumphing over Rahul Gandhi, younger than him by two decades, because he spoke the language of the young. He still does. But the state unit is a study in jaded leadership, completely out of touch with what an increasingly young city needs. Kejriwal, with his emphasis on 20 new colleges, regulation of school fees, and safety for women, understood that.
#6. It cannot exploit the prime minister's appeal repeatedly. India elected Modi prime minister to govern the nation, not canvass for the BJP. The prime minister's work ethic is legendary but it is best used in the service of Bharat not the Bharatiya Janata Party. Or to quote Gladwell again, “The logic of the inverted-U curve is that the same strategies that work really well at first stop working past a certain point”.