By M D Nalapat
NDA needs to ask how many believe that their days have become better since 2014.
Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan was recently adjudged guilty of
corrupt practices by the judiciary in his country, and immediately
stepped down from office. Since then, Sharif, daughter Maryam and
husband Safdar have been found guilty in the Panama Papers case.
Interestingly, in India, the same Panama revelations appear to have
generated only a much lower degree of official attention (although of
course the SIT must, as usual, have had sittings on the matter). Have
the prominent names from India that were disclosed in the Panama
revelations, been given the benefit of the doubt? This is, after all, a
country where Coal Minister Manmohan Singh was declared guiltless by the
Central government despite a scam involving the allocation of
coalfields that resulted in the loss of billions of dollars to the
exchequer. The reasons for which the former Prime Minister (in direct
charge of Coal at the time) was found innocent of any involvement in the
scam have yet to be explained, despite statements. For this is in the
face of statements from some of the officials involved that the former
PM was fully in the frame when the impugned decisions regarding
allotment of coalfields was taken. But Manmohan Singh is not as
charitable towards his successor, as witness the allegation of highway
robbery made by him with reference to the 8 November 2016 demonetisation
of 86% of the currency in the country. Since then, a resurgent Congress
Party has persisted in a barrage of allegations of wrongdoing directed
against the NDA II government, and this is expected to mount to a
crescendo just before the next Lok Sabha polls. And while it is true
that both A. Raja as well as Dayanidhi Maran have as Cabinet Ministers
been subjected to court proceedings and worse, these were initiated
while Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister.
During the 41 months that the NDA has
been in charge, neither the CBI nor the ED nor the DRI or even the
Income-Tax Department has prosecuted any UPA-era minister, despite the
coalition being described by the BJP throughout 2010-14 as being the
most corrupt in the world.
These days, from within the NDA, much is
being made of both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul being “out on bail”. What such
spokespersons omit to mention is that these proceedings are owed not to
anything that the government has done, but to the unconnected actions
of Subramanian Swamy. Of course, a different situation prevails where
the Ram Janambhoomi is concerned, as both Swamy as well as the Modi
government have been working strenuously to ensure that the courts clear
the way for a temple to rise on the birthplace of Lord Ram.
It has been claimed that the election
results of the Assembly polls in UP showed that the people of India
welcomed demonetisation. So does the poor performance of the NDA in
Punjab and Goa show that the reverse is true, or are only UP voters
representative of India? Setting aside chatter about EVMs and their
vulnerabilities, a more plausible explanation for the BJP’s victory was
that the Muslim community got a hyper-optimistic idea of the prospects
of the SP-Congress alliance as a consequence of the saturation coverage
by the media of Rahul Gandhi teaming up with Akhilesh Yadav, and
thereupon switched from the BSP to the SP-Congress alliance. Had they
remained with Mayawati, the way it had been predicted before the
Rahul-Akhilesh handshake, the outcome of the UP polls would have been
very different. Of course, the BJP gained from the perception of UP
voters that Narendra Modi would ensure jobs for them, a view that was
diluted in its potency in states where there were incumbent governments,
as for example Goa and Punjab. Such anti-incumbency being the case, the
efficiency with which BJP president Amit Shah has ensured that state
after state gets ruled by the BJP, may be a mixed blessing. Should there
be “wave” elections, as in the Modi wave of 2014, and simultaneous
polls take place to Parliament as well as the state legislatures, it is
possible that a single party may dominate the political map of the
country during such polls, the way the Congress did until 1967, only to
make way for a challenger the next time around. The rate of growth in
India during earlier years of all-India domination by a single party was
around 2%. Lately, while the number of states and seats controlled by
the BJP has been growing, economic growth has slowed down. As for
scandals from the past such as Bofors, voters in India are not concerned
about the past as much as they are about the present and the future.
The question the poll managers of the NDA need to ask is how many voters
believe that their days have become better since 2014 or not, for that
will decide the 2019 verdict.
Despite AAP and Congress-led efforts at
reducing the esteem voters feel for Prime Minister Modi, he is still far
and away the most popular politician in the country. This is the trump
card of the BJP, especially in the Gujarat Assembly polls. Should BJP
hold on to its majority in that state, it would indicate that voters are
still hopeful of the Prime Minister delivering on his promise of more
jobs and higher incomes. Had there been double digit growth in the
country, Hardik Patel would have got a job through the online job sites
that he applied on, and the Patidar stir may have been less
consequential for the state. Patel’s arrest made matters worse, with
Anandiben Patel doing the young activist the favour of making him a
hero. Earlier, Home Minister P. Chidambaram had made Anna Hazare a
global celebrity by incarcerating him in 2011. Should Gujarat remain in
the BJP column, it would indicate that Modi’s electoral magic is still
operative, and that in 2019 as well, the BJP should get the 245-plus
seats the party needs to remain in power in an increasingly politically
polarised country. Should the Gujarat results prove disappointing for
the BJP, it would be a warning by that state’s perceptive voters that in
exchange for support, voters expect a very different scale and style of
performance from Modi and his ministers during their remaining months
in office, than has been the case since 26 May 2014.
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