Modi wave? No, it’s the AAP tsunami

If there was a single lesson to emerge from the 4-0 drubbing that the BJP delivered to the Congress in the recent Assembly polls, it was this: While Narendra Modi may have hurtled across the electoral spectrum trying to make the polls all about himself, not only was a Modi wave absent, it is the shock emergence of a completely apolitical force in the form of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that could be the story of the parliamentary polls of 2014.

For the BJP, out of power for 10 years, as much as the Congress trying to retain relevance, it is now Arvind Kejriwal, the outsider, with the potential to take his AAP experiment India-wide, who may be the man to beat.

Indeed, Modi, dwarfing his own party, and even the Chief Ministers of the two BJP-ruled states, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, had turned the elections into a Modi vs Congress battle. 

And while the Congress under Rahul Gandhi were dealt a body blow,  questions are now being raised about Modi’s popularity and the so-called ‘Modi-wave’. Was there one?

Behind closed doors, it is the state BJP heavyweights who are being credited for victory, and it is also acknowledged that the Gandhi-topi clad, jhadu-wielding new hero of Indian politics,  Kejriwal, has changed the political discourse. 

As for the BJP victories, in MP, BJP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan scripted its  return to a third term with a two-thirds majority — a feat outside Modi’s ken.

As a senior BJP leader admitted, “It was Chauhan’s clean image and popularity that triggered a tremendous win”. BJP patriarch L.K. Advani was equally unwilling to give Modi credit, saying the victory was a “contribution of all party members, particularly the Chief Ministers”.

In Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje had begun the groundwork much before the party nominated Modi as its PM candidate, tapping into rural Rajasthan, and dominating the social media, particularly Facebook.

In 2008, one of the major reasons for BJP’s rout in Rajasthan was infighting in the party. This time, heading a united unit in Rajasthan, there was no stopping Ms Raje. She captured the rural vote, while Modi brought in urban Rajasthan, in a victory BJP insiders say was shared by the Raje-Modi duo.

Chhattisgarh’s last gasp victory only reinforced the BJP thinking that while “infighting within Congress and internal sabotage, saved the day for the BJP”, Modi alone could not win the states. 

In Delhi, which is regarded as a barometer of the country’s urban vote bank, the rise of  Kejriwal and his AAP is a clear signal that this outfit, riding high on the anti-corruption plank, is all set to tear into both Congress and BJP.

AAP struck both at Congress and BJP vote banks by  exposing contentious land deals by both Robert Vadra and the then BJP chief Nitin Gadkari. With 28 Assembly seats in its kitty, speculation is rife that AAP could bag most of Delhi’s 7 Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. 

What’s worrying both the BJP and the Congress is AAP’s anarchist tendencies. Structured as an opposition party, and with ideological leanings towards Maoists, in that they want to overthrow and change the system, have adopted a radical approach to reach its goal, and share a strong disdain for Indian politicians, while claiming to fight for the rights of the common man, Kejriwal has struck a chord with the common man with his man-next-door image.

He’s won public approval for his refusal to travel in luxury cars, sporting red beacons while feeding the anger and frustration with the system.

“Who am I? I am a common man. I want my rights,” Kejriwal says in statements that many say echo that of the Naxalites in the mid-60s, “land to tiller” programme that changed India.

Kejriwal’s policy on the economy and foreign policy issues remain vague. His rallies have no glitz. But his brand of politics and the support it garnered has stunned Congress and shocked BJP.

Could AAP capture the vaccum provided by the failure of the Reds. CPM politburo  member Sitaram Yechury refutes the argument. “AAP, with no ideology or framework, can not capture our space,” he said, adding, however, that AAP’s anti-corruption plank “can eat into the urban vote banks of regional parties like SP and BSP”.

A nervous Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda wants Congress to offer “unconditional support to AAP” to form government in Delhi. Even BJP chief Rajnath Singh grudgingly accepts the AAP factor in Delhi. “There was anti-incumbency against Congress rule in the state.

But AAP garnered maximum benefit of this anti-incumbency”, Hooda told reporters. But he avoided questions on why Modi’s  popularity failed to beat AAP in Delhi. Faceless candidates of AAP not merely won in slum clusters and unauthorised colonies in Delhi but they triumphed in upmarket Greater Kailash.

AAP has cut across class barriers, and Kejriwal himself emerged a giant-killer, when he defeated Delhi’s three-time CM Shiela Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency.

AAP’s influence in the urban vote bank has unnerved BJP. Till now, Modi was being touted as the icon of the youth and urban India. Some 65 per cent of Indians are less than 35 years of age. The Census of 2011 has pegged the number of first-time voters at over 149 million, nearly a fifth of the total electorate. If Delhi is any indicator, AAP is closing in on this vote bank.

The BJP has always done well in one-on-one contests. The party would no doubt have swept Delhi in the absence of AAP.  Its results are dismal in states where more than two major political outfits are in the fray, as in Punjab, Bihar, Odisha, where BJP played the role of a lesser coalition partner.

The task before the Modi-led BJP, as AAP gathers momentum, is to gather allies. While Congress, with its professed secular ideology, may remain attractive to regional allies, a  Modi-led BJP is not. To lure the allies with Modi at its helm, BJP would have to get 200 or more Lok Sabha seats on its own.

Of the 101 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the BJP has no presence at all. In Karnataka, it continues to struggle. BJP is yet to open an account in West Bengal where 42 LS seats are up for grabs.

Of the 25 LS seats in the northeast, the  BJP’s fortunes are not so bright. In other words, Modi will have to strike pre-poll alliances to make the BJP’s presence felt in at least 168 of 542 Lok Sabha berths if it must have a shy at power, while contending with the AAP effect in the urban vote bank in the Hindi heartland. 

For all those who have written Congress off as the underdog, “Congress might have become  a poor underdog. Therefore, one has to be careful about kicking it too much”. In six months, anything could happen. AAP could fizzle out. BJP could rethink Modi. Congress could claw its way back. Politics, the art of the impossible.

…And allied matters on a troubled ship

…And allied matters on a troubled ship

Venkatesh Kesari/DC

The sliding of fortunes in four states in the Hindi heartland — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi — has not only made regional players all too wary of the prospect of Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate’s fast improving chances at taking a shy at Delhi, it has also contributed to the growing isolation of Congress, whose putative allies in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Maharasthra and Jharkhand are now weighing whether a pre-poll alliance with it will work to their benefit in 2014.

Indeed, boding ill for a UPA 3, and unlike UPA 1, when  alliances with DMK in Tamil Nadu, TC in West Bengal, Laloo and Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar, Pawar in Maharashtra powered it to the Centre, few if any are keen to ally with Congress this time around.

The Assembly poll reversals have added to the further decimation of Congress in the heartland states where apart from Uttarakhand, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, it has a less than minimal presence in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab. 

In the southern states, it rules in Karnataka and Kerala but could lose its bastion of Andhra Pradesh, while knowing it can never hope to be anything more than a bystander in Tamil Nadu where it has not had a presence since 1967.

In the East, it will be interesting to see if Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress backs Congress candidates in West Bengal, and if not, whether they can win without the TC’s active support. Odisha has slipped out of Congress’ control.

As has Goa. Although in Maharashtra, the Congress has held on, alongside NCP strongman Sharad Pawar, with whom an alliance was forged in 1999. Modi’s Gujarat has remained a BJP bastion, voting saffron ever since the saffronists cracked the electoral code. 

Congress leaders, looking at the fall-out of this round of polls, and unable to nail the exact reasons for their shrinking footprint across the nation, now fear that the party may not even cross 100 seats in 2014.

Much of the introspection that has followed the poll debacle has pointed the finger at rising prices and the UPA-2 government’s performance these last 10 years being out of synch with the party’s pro-poor goals. Others are also quietly exploring whether the less than subtle promotion of dynasty from top to bottom in the organisation and the strategy to cut mass-based leaders to size and promote lightweights are  contributory factors.

The rumblings in the rank and file are growing.  In UP, a section of its MPs and prospective candidates for the Lok Sabha polls are pushing for a pre-poll alliance with the BSP.

In UP (80), West Bengal (42),Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (40) and Andhra Pradesh (42), some 204 Lok Sabha seats are in contention. Add to that Bihar (40), Jharkhand (14) and Maharashtra (48) and it is obvious the challenge before Congress to win 306 Lok Sabha seats without pre-poll allies becomes even bigger.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s calling card to bring in the young voter was going to be his own youth. But as the fading popularity of Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party after he formed the government in UP, and now Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal’s victory in Delhi have demonstrated, elections are not won merely on caste, region and gender consideration or money or muscle power.  Neither can it be won with the NGO-type politics favoured by the Congress’ top echelons.

While Congress understands the grammar of power, its idealistic leadership is cocooned from reality because of the security ring, and influenced by ‘apolitical’ leaders, it may be missing the wood for the trees.  As Modi marches towards Delhi, for instance, Rahul Gandhi wants to reform the party.

Factor in its inability to accommodate coalition partners and you can see why it is not the allies’ first partner of choice, even as the Congress continues to believe its secular tag ensures its primacy, and Narendra Modi’s emergence casts the Lok Sabha election as a secularism versus communalism battle.

The perils of anti-incumbency, lack of a grass-roots organisation in a number of states and the absence of strong local leaders are the other factors working against the Congress.

Clearly, the regional parties — ranging from the Left parties, TN heavyweight Karunanidhi and Bengal tigress Mamata to the two UP power houses of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav, arch rivals, forced to be on the same side in supporting the Congress — hold the key to a Congress coalition that could hold against a Modiist BJP upsurge.

The UPA has managed political contradictions thus far. But without a clear prime ministerial candidate around whom the party and its allies could coalesce, and rally against the challenge presented by Modi, that may not hold long. 

Sonia Gandhi has added to the confusion by declaring that the party would declare its PM candidate at an appropriate time. Equally, the talk of non-political names like former IT czar Nandan Nilekani coming in as a possible PM candidate or Priyanka Vadra riding in to save the day, only adds to the uncertainty.

A new strategy, a new mantra, that responds to the angst of its allies as much as its own reinvention as a party relevant to all sections of society could be the Congress’ only route to a comeback.