Whither BJP?

It is unlikely that a party which believes that it will get lucky the way Congress did in 2004, will read much in the assembly election results for the five states. Since the party in question has never bothered to compare  its scraggly grassroots structure with Congress’s undeniable presence, however skeletal, in the five lakh odd villages across the country, it has all along believed that the right amount of intrigue will allow it to have yet another stint at the center. While it is surprising that this mentality does not seem to have changed, even after 7 years of National irrelevance, what is certainly more inexplicable is the fact that this ostrich like approach has been adopted by leaders who attained power only after cutting their teeth in agitational street politics. Since we haven’t had a generational change of leadership yet, we still have the same set of ‘young’ leaders presiding over the BJP’s sure but steady decline.

While Pranab’s Mukherjee’s comments on the BJP’s performance may be termed churlish, there is no denial that the failure to register its presence in states comprising 116 Lok Sabha seats indicate that the general voter is still hesitant to trust the BJP. Leave aside having the Lotus bloom in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Puducherry and Assam, the party has had to face the ignominy of seeing its presence shrink in Assam, the only state where it had an outside chance of coming to power.

Let us look at some figures:

Kerala: BJP came second in three seats, up from the regular runner up position in two seats. While there may some substance in allegations of UDF-LDF vote transfer, it is not their opponent’s but BJP’s business to see that they win a seat. Regarding vote share; while they do seem to have registered a 1.25% rise, it still brings them to 6.05%, close to the 5.85% and 5.75%, they had registered in 2001 and 1996 polls respectively. Otherwise, the figures are lower than what they had managed in the civic polls left last year. In a nutshell, BJP remains where it was a decade back.

Tamil Nadu: BJP came second in 1 seat and no, it was not Nagercoil, which it was expecting to win. Vote share wise, it got less than 3% votes. While it was still better than 2006 elections, BJP had indeed won the Ramanathpuram seat in 1996 polls when it had fought without entering into any alliance. Yet again, no forward movement for the part in the last 15 years

Assam: While BJP’s seats have halved, its vote share has fallen only by a percent. The dichotomy in seats and votes is explained by the fact that while its increased presence in Upper Assam was not sufficient enough to translate into votes, reduced vote share in Barak valley ensured that it lost what it had. Anyways, 11% vote share and runner up spot in 24 seats can at best make a party a pressure group, not the ruling party in any state. And this is a state which has held huge promise for the BJP right from 1991. In the last 20 years though, overall the BJP has remained where it was. To blame the AGP for its bad performance, i.e., not forming an alliance is as asinine an excuse as it could be. This excuse by itself is sufficient proof that the BJP was more interested in piggy backing the AGP that emerging as a credible alternative to the Congress in Assam

West Bengal: The current assembly polls are the worst performance of the BJP in Bengal in the last two decades. While in 1991, it managed the runner up spot in quite a few constituencies and bagged a healthy 11.34% vote share, it came down to 6.45% in 1996, further down to 5.19% in 2001 and around 4% now. Forget about many seats, the closest they came to winning was at Madarihat (otherwise considered a sure shot win), where the candidate scored only 25% of popular vote as against a 38% share in 2009 General Elections. In no other seat could the party come remotely close to replicating even the Madarihat performance. Quite a fall for the party focusing on Bengal for than a year now.

What is obvious from BJP’s performance is that the rewards of anti incumbency or any anger against the UPA government will be reaped by the party / leader seen as a credible alternative. With the propensity of BJP’s current leadership to fight is battles in television studios and five star hotels, it is not a surprise that people have little trust in BJP’s ability to offer a credible alternative. A party which has turned its back on its core constituency and does not have any ideology to speak of, can only be a weak clone of the Congress and with the original very much around, why should one vote for the wannabe? Results from Bengal, Kerala and Assam clearly indicate that even the vulnerable Hindu community has reposed faith in TMC, LDF and the Congress, respectively, rather than trusting the ostensible protector of the Hindus.

However, to be fair to the BJP, it did try hard to register its presence as far as campaigning is concerned. Without paying any attention to the carping of an ex-nationalist commentator, it would be fair to state that the party’s endeavor to increase its presence, so that they be of incremental benefit to potential allies. BJP won allies in the 1990s only because the allies felt threatened that their space could be occupied by the BJP or because BJP gave them enough incremental support to challenge Congress in their respective states. Why should any party have a NPA as an ally, after all? Only, fighting elections alone does not make a party powerful. It is finally people’s support that matters and people like to believe in leaders they support. Sadly for the BJP, its discredited central leadership is yet to hang up boots and likewise, it is yet to produce a crop of leaders which could set a popular agenda. Leave aside these states, the BJP's performance in Pipraich Assembly bypolls in UP, where it managed to just about hang on to its vote share and third position, indicates that the UP turnaround is yet to happen. A feeling of jubiliation on Left's defeat will be foolhardy for while a weakened Left may imply death of a Third Front, there still lies an option of a 'Fourth Front', a motely group of parties garnering enough seats to form a rag tag Government for some time. Expecting a hamstrung Gadkari, who anyways did not exactly have a great innings in Maharashtra, to do wonders to the party all by himself, is expecting too much from him.

It is funny that some sections of the media have yet again blamed the RSS for BJP’s poor performance in the polls. Hello, where has the RSS been in BJP’s functioning / electioneering except for exceptions like Madhya Pradesh? Who knows, probably the absence of RSS/VHP/BD volunteers is something which has been impacting the efficacy of BJP’s electioneering!