IS THE GROUND SLIPPING FROM UNDER AMIT SHAH'S FEET?

NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata President Amit Shah has lost the magic that his party had credited him with after the amazing victory in the Lok Sabha elections. The potion is wearing off under the wear and tear of real politics with Shah losing the sheen, and struggling to keep the party together and in fighting spirit after the compromises being effected in Jammu and Kashmir, the rout in Delhi, and the ‘Manjhi’ episode in Bihar where Nitish Kumar triumphed at the end of a sordid drama.

Shah who enjoys the confidence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and derives his clout from therein, now finds that the bludgeon does not work in the long term. Not until and unless the voters want it to, as they did in the parliamentary elections when they were fed up with the Congress rule and wanted to see the last of the party and its government. But when the voter has experienced the catharsis of a successful vote, he or she becomes far more demanding, exacting, and careful in the exercise of the ballot. And political parties can only meet this with real politics, and not over reliance on magical goodwill that---as Delhi has demonstrated---can evaporate within days.

The questions to be asked thus are is Shah good for the BJP? Are his strong arm tactics really what the party requires? Or is he an overdose who could become a liability with time? More so as Delhi has demonstrated the growing intolerance of the youth for communal violence, and a desire for united and inclusive polity as the criterion for progress and development.

Shah’s politics, before PM Modi launched him on the national platform, was limited to Gujarat where he still has serious cases against him despite some recent clearances by the court. He came in over and above resistance from within the BJP and sections of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with PM Modi finally put his full weight behind him for BJP President. Weight that could not be ignored in the light of the Lok Sabha results, more so as the Prime Minister was willing to share credit for this only with Shah and no other leader. Shah was credited with masterful ‘social engineering’ in the wake of the violence in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh, and with skilful ‘strategy’ that mopped up the votes garnered by then prime ministerial candidate Modi and his powerful oratory.

The duo virtually took charge of the general elections, and such was the anger with the Congress party, and the surge of support for PM Modi that the BJP veterans were silenced into submission. This gave Shah the space he was looking for, and he used his tireless energy to tour the country, and set up organisational structures parallel to the BJP units with the help of the RSS and more so its front organisations. He was able to thus isolate the local dissent, and at the same time feed into the larger campaign being run by PM Modi’s managers, of centering the Lok Sabha polls around the one larger than life personality. The tactics worked, even more successfully than the BJP had envisaged, and PM Modi was applauded into office with Shah firmly by his side. In fact in Delhi’s drawing rooms that he entered only towards the last days of the Lok Sabha polls, he was seen as the alter ego of Modi, the man who could speak with knowledge and authority of policy and the Prime Minister’s thought processes. For instance if he said a particular individual, seen as powerful by Delhi’s chattering classes, was not in the good books of the PM, he certainly would know what he was talking about.

Delhi’s never silent grapevine spurted a few months ago that the Prime Minister was not too happy with Shah. This rumour came shortly after Shah was heard praising himself in West Bengal in December last year where he told a public meeting, “A few days ago, Mamata Banerjee had asked: who is Amit Shah? I am Amit Shah… I have come here to start the process of uprooting Trinamool Congress.” The “I” was clearly the reason for the rumours suggesting he had been cold shouldered by a not very happy Prime Minister, but while such reports can rarely be verified except through circumstantial information, it is true that Shah has never repeated this “I” claim again. And of course, the rumours have subsided.

Shah, like PM Modi, believes in strong arm tactics. And while this worked in the parliamentary elections it is not paying dividends now. He has a three pronged, simple approach: one, move into the targeted state and set up own parallel organisation of ‘loyal’ BJP workers, RSS and affiliate groups cadres to work for PM Modi per se;

Two, to establish from the very beginning that PM Modi will be the star campaigner and other local leaders, or for that matter national leaders of the party, are not required;

Three, to make it clear that no chief ministerial candidates will be entertained, and the final choice will be made by PM Modi alone.

These ground rules have been pretty firmly set up by Shah who literally mows through the BJP organisation in a state to bring down structures, and create his own that he thinks are better equipped to win the polls. In the process not just the party but also allies are trampled over, with results that could be damaging in the long term.

A first example was Maharashtra that voted for the BJP, but not before its relations with till recently staunch ally Shiv Sena had crumbled almost to the point of disrepair. Relations between the two allies are tense, to say the least, from the very beginning of the campaign when Shah announced that the BJP would form the government on its own. Local BJP leaders were disregarded to a great extent, with Shah building his usual parallel organisation with perceived loyalists and the Sangh cadres for the state polls. The chief minister was selected from the campaigners, with loyalty to PM Modi alone being the criterion over and above capability, with Shah rarely bothering with the so called sentiments of local BJP leaders on this issue.

The murmurings of dissent, however, remained just that, murmurings with the local BJP leaders unwilling to be quoted in their off-the-record anger being registered by sections of the local media.The government was formed, with Shiv Sena’s threats being countered by Nationalist Congress party chief Sharad Pawar who seems to be waiting in the more than visible wings, to extend support to PM Modi and his government in Maharashtra. However, the unease with the Shiv Sena erupts every now and again with an attack on the BJP by the Maharashtra party that is an unnecessary fissure at this point in time.

Shah makes no bones about the fact that the BJP needs only PM Modi to campaign, and the rest of the party is virtually irrelevant, even redundant. This was apparent in Delhi as well with Shah ignoring the local leaders, and the local factions almost entirely. The contenders for chief ministership were told categorically to first campaign for the elections, and to leave these matters to PM Modi (an euphemism for “ and Shah.”) The crores of rupees spent in heavy advertising across the media focused on the Prime Minister, with no one sharing the space or for that matter the promises. The campaign was limited to the candidates, with PM Modi being reserved by Shah for the last days of the elections when he addressed four quick rallies in quick succession in what were supposed to be a ‘carpet bombing’ strategy that bombed for Shah and the BJP however in the final analysis.

Within nine months the Delhi voter voted out the BJP for not living up to its promises, for the ghar wapsi and communal campaigns, for spiralling prices, and of course for PM Modi’s ten lakh suit. The communal violence that gripped the far flung settlements of Delhi like Trilokpuri, was unable to polarise the voters of Delhi as had the Muzaffarnagar violence in western Uttar Pradesh, with even these tactics to trigger the desired ‘social engineering did not work. Delhi came as a severe setback for the BJP, with Shah facing his first revolt from within the party that became violent, and was quelled only when the police was called in.

Bihar, West Bengal and of course Uttar Pradesh remain firmly on Shah’s itinerary. Bihar of course has acquired an urgency given the elections due there later this year. But there too, Shah’s tactics have not given him or the BJP a good name. It might be recalled that even in Delhi the initial plan was to form a government through defections if possible, as the Assembly was not dissolved but kept in suspended animation after Arvind Kejriwal resigned. The RSS came in the way and made it clear that it would not support any effort to engineer defections in the national capital of India, so the plan according to media reports at the time was dropped.

This was not so in Bihar, with the BJP under Shah giving full support to the then Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi to stay in power despite Nitish Kumar being elected as the leader of the legislature party, and hence legally authorised to be the new Chief Minister. Manjhi was encouraged openly by the BJP to rebel, but did not get the support and finally had to step down in a drama that did not elevate the BJP in either popularity or voters respect. However, as Nitish Kumar has pointed out there are more weapons in the BJPs arsenal, with violence as in UP not being ruled out by JD(U) leaders in private conversations.

West Bengal is a state that in Shah’s assessment is open to the BJP now with the virtual collapse of the Left Front. However, two recent by elections were won by Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress with the BJP coming second in one, and third in the other. The BJP had secured 17 per cent of the vote in the Lok Sabha elections in a state where it barely had a presence before. This time in the Bongaon and Krishnaganj by elections its vote share registered an increase, but the TMC remained far ahead with about 40 per cent of the votes. This makes it clear that the strong arm tactics of Shah have not worked---at least not as yet---with the CBI “Sharda case” not working the magic that Shah had clearly hoped for. Instead his direct head on tactics with Banerjee do not seem to be yielding dividends although after a meeting to discuss the results, the BJP seemed to have adopted the position that it is doing well in the state, and just needs to build on what it is doing for the Assembly elections due next year.

All eyes are on Bihar now, and the election results will determine not just the future of the BJP but of Shah himself. The murmurs of dissent might come out from the rooms onto the streets if the voters do not repose their faith in the BJP, with Shah’s future in the party coming under question. More so as he remains unpopular, but then to give him his due, he certainly does not care about winning personal popularity contests.