The more literarily inclined might, on hearing of the BJP’s ambitious southern war cry quote from Macbeth to say it is perhaps vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself but when it comes to the ruling saffron dispensation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, nothing is beyond the realm of political possibility.
The BJP has spectacularly perfected the art of facing the grand old party, Congress, head-on, and defeating it, never mind a few reversals in Himachal or Karnataka. But its performance and results against regional parties, especially those in non-Hindi speaking zones, are below average. For one, the BJP gets dubbed not just a Hindu party but a Hindi party.
Again, the BJP has taken a lot of time to understand and perfect the template of facing Hindi-speaking parties like Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in UP, but against an array of state parties based on regional and linguistic pride — TMC in Bengal, BJD in Odisha, DMK in Tamil Nadu, YSRC and Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh, BRS in Telangana, among others — they have failed to find the winning formula.
The south of Vindhyas also create additional challenges — good law and order, stable politics, extremely good developmental and welfare delivery for decades by most of the governments in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana and AP — means the transformative achievements of the Modi government on certain planks that yield spectacular results in UP, Bihar, Rajasthan or MP, fail to provide similar excitement in the southern voters.
Another big problem the BJP is facing, and internally fighting, is the issue of money. The economies in the south of India have grown astronomically, creating high quality of rural and urban infrastructure, with good poverty alleviation and strong growth trajectories. The South has also invested and achieved, relatively speaking, better standards of public delivery in education and healthcare.
BJP national president J.P. Nadda has given a call to his party workers and leaders to try to double the party’s Lok Sabha power but it can, at least for now, only come as a junior partner to the more powerful regional allies.
