It is a commentary on how the campaign for the Maharashtra election has shaped up that the Congress devoted its final message to charging the Bharatiya Janata Party with facilitating “paid news” by re-telecasting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to the Indian diaspora at the Madison Square Gardens in New York.
On the face of it, the BJP was in the clear. It had paid a number of Marathi TV channels for telecasting a political message at 9 pm — a prime slot that is normally used for the main news telecast of the day. It was an interesting marketing innovation, and one that caught its rivals by surprise and consternation. However, apart from the move being unprecedented, there was no evidence of wrongdoing. It was, at best, a lateral extension of the now-familiar practice of advertisers plastering the first two pages of mass circulating newspapers with their advertisements.
The issue, to my mind, isn’t paid news. What this incident revealed was the extraordinary extent to which the Maharashtra Assembly election has become Modi-centric. That the BJP would over-use the ace in its pack was only to be expected. Less expected was the fact that its opponents gave this Modi-dominated campaign a generous helping hand.
The Congress, which has been ruling Maharashtra in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party for 15 years, should have been highlighting its record of governance and preparing to re-emerge as the single largest party. Instead, it chose to direct its fire at the Modi government’s apparent inability to fulfil its general election promises in five months. The Congress helped make Mr Modi the issue, a scenario that suited the BJP admirably.
As for the Shiv Sena that broke its alliance with the BJP by punching above its weight, the campaign plank should have been confined to its regional credentials. Instead, having been wrong-footed by Mr Modi’s proclamation that he would not attack it out of deference to the memory of the late Balasaheb Thackeray, it first feigned injured innocence — quite forgetting that it was its claim on 18 seats that had been won by the BJP in 2009 that was the deal-breaker. Then, once Mr Modi started attracting huge crowds, it opted for regionalist belligerence by comparing the Prime Minister to Afzal Khan, Shivaji’s Moghul opponent. Finally, along with Raj Thackeray who was fighting a sub-battle to claim the political mantle of his uncle Bal Thackeray, it stooped to crude anti-Gujarati rhetoric that, ironically, may have helped to consolidate the non-Marathi speakers in Mumbai, Thane and Pune behind the BJP.
In the past, both in Gujarat and in the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, Mr Modi has always benefited from making himself the main issue of any election. Apart from projecting his forceful leadership style, this approach has served to override other divisions in society based on caste and community. This year, both in Haryana and Maharashtra, the BJP took an audacious gamble by going it alone. It certainly has a thin presence in Maharashtra, mainly concentrated in Mumbai and the Vidarbha region. But its local penetration was always limited. By making Mr Modi the issue, it hoped to paper over these weaknesses. Even in a five-cornered fight the BJP was loath to make party identity the main theme. For example, in a BJP versus Congress versus Shiv Sena versus NCP, it would, at best, have an advantage over the NCP and over the Shiv Sena only in Vidarbha. As an organisation with very deep social roots, the Congress still enjoys an advantage over the others. The Modi factor overwhelms all local factors and makes the election a quasi-presidential one.
There is, of course, no guarantee that this over-reliance on Mr Modi will work. The past precedents are mixed. In recent times, only an Indira Gandhi, re-energised by her Lok Sabha victory in 1971 and her triumph in the Bangladesh war the same year, was able to secure votes in an Assembly election on the strength of her national leadership. But that was in 1972. Since then, national leaders have a mixed record of trying to put the national into state elections. Despite his landslide win in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi was unable to lead the Congress to wins after 1985. To that extent Mr Modi’s tactics are not based on any election formula. He is risking his reputation.
The one factor that goes in Mr Modi and the BJP’s favour is the fierce anti-incumbency against the Congress in both Maharashtra and Haryana. To compound that disadvantage, the Congress remains in a state of disarray after its humiliating defeat in the general election. As a party built on the principle of unwavering loyalty to a political dynasty, the Congress is quite demoralised over the reluctance or even the failure of either Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi to provide sustained leadership for a recovery. The two stalwarts of the first family of the Congress have given the impression that they are either too weary or too disinterested. That perception has served to further dispirit an already demoralised party. Yes, in Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda is putting up a fight, but in Maharashtra the Congress seems reconciled to an ignominious showing.
Judging purely from the campaign, the BJP enjoys a clear upper-hand. But this is purely perceptional. The pundits are expecting the BJP to emerge noisily triumphant on October 19, when the electronic voting machines (EVMs) pour out the results. The danger is that in the event the performance falls short of undefined but lofty expectations, the blame will fall on Mr Modi. Banking on a big leader for a local election is always a double-edged sword.
The writer is a senior journalist
