By hoisting three faceless figures as CM in the Hindi belt, the BJP is trying to prove a point – that, under Narendra Modi, men with mettle have no scope to survive. Contrast this with the arrival of Anamula Revant Reddy as the Congress chief minister in Telangana. He fought his way up inch by inch, drew huge crowds across the state by leading his party’s campaign from the front and rightfully commanded the strength to be installed as chief minister of the new government.
The Congress party recognized Revant Reddy’s individuality. It acknowledged his strengths and right to govern the state. This is an admirable trait with the Congress. It is broadminded enough to grant space to the right men and women, though not at the party’s apex where the Nehru family, with a history of sacrifices to the nation, would stay fixated.
Have we the outsiders ever heard of these three men installed by the BJP as chief ministers in the latest round?
Have they made a mark in politics or public life in any manner other than winning an assembly seat or working as party secretary, as the Rajasthan CM-pick did, or working as a minister as the new MP chief minister did without adding a single feather ever to their political caps? Or, for that matter, had Shivraj Singh Chouhan ever hogged headlines other than in washing the feet of a Dalit, presumably by way of penance at the way the people of his state urinated on anyone coming their way, day or night, shop or street? Have we ever heard a good word about the governance of BJP chief ministers in Gujarat, Haryana or even in the good old days of Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra about their performances through a full five years or more?
Governance is not a child’s play. Governance is the art of doing what’s possible. Those who have the drive, initiative and enterprise do a good job. Others sit and sleep through their terms with minimum work. The basic requirement of a government in a democracy is to pay salary to its employees on time, do the policing, legislate, manage the finances of the state or the Centre, guard the territories from encroachment and infiltrations, build infrastructure, and above all, improve the lot of the people. The rest would be taken care of on their own or by private entities as in the case of education, industrialization, agriculture activities, and so on and so forth. As chief minister, you can even sit and sleep through your entire term. Others would do the work of turning the wheels of administration.
Faceless Figures as CM: There is no general yardstick by which the performance of a government is measured.
A forward momentum is in the scheme of things. It is natural that more roads are built, more trains are introduced, more flights are operated, or more acquisitions are made in the defence sector. There is no way a poorly performing chief minister or his government can be dismissed as long as he maintained law and order and did not engage in anti-national activities. This, by extension, means that any Tom, Dick or Harry can be occupying any chair at the top layers of government in capacities as PM, ministers or CM.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with his repeated terms as chief minister of Gujarat, governed the nation in satisfactory ways in some respects as in managing the economy– so to assume, based on present perceptions – building the infrastructure like roads and aviation hubs, slightly improving the lot of the railways (Vande Bharat; and bullet trains are still a mirage!) and above all strengthening the national defence to an extent.
Yet, Modi has his limitations.
Despite the hype, nothing goes to show he was cut for international diplomacy though he rubbed shoulders with global leaders frequently. International diplomacy is not about being paly-paly; it’s all about effective bargaining with the strengths we have and based on the postures we take as a nation in international affairs. China, despite its totalitarian governance system, is the toast of the season, winning friends near and far because of its huge economic clout.
Smaller nations in the geographical neighbourhood are cozying up to China because they gain a basket of goodies from China, be it loans, infra-help or security support as in the case of Sri Lanka set against India. Even in the Security Council or other top global forums, China’s words count. India sits in the sidelines. Reason why, even in situations of aggressiveness along the LoC and promotion of terrorism on Indian soil by Pakistan, Modi could only squirm in his chair and the US looked the other way, strategically refusing to disown its long-time ally.
But, as we have acknowledged previously too, Modi’s strength as the leader of the nation is that he provided political and economic stability for the nation in the last nearly 10 years. Hats off to him! In the process, he famously avoided confrontations both at home and in the nation’s dealings with its neighbours. The surgical strikes were small, but courageous steps, faced against odds like the Pulwama terror attack on a CRPF convoy.
Yet, Modi as leader of the nation left many vital areas unaddressed. When it came to reforms, he implemented GST, the unification of the market taxation system that, though, was initiated by the previous UPA government. This is helping the nation earn huge revenue, build highways and strengthen other infrastructure.
Highway’s minister Nitin Gadkari is a performer par excellence and it showed up in the growth of the roads system. The same growth, however, cannot be claimed in several other sectors. Modi’s attempts at farm reforms failed. He cut and ran, faced with protests from wealthy farmers in Punjab, Haryana and UP. Assembly elections were round the corner then. The first priority for Modi was to ensure his party’s win in UP and elsewhere. The farm reform legislation had their good sides. But the vested interests as also the rootless Left, with less of its men and more of its red flags on the farmer agitation front, let the nation down.
Modi’s limitations were most evident in his failure to strengthen the nation’s judicial systems, which is a law unto itself. The judiciary across the country is increasingly steeped in corruption, cases are going on for decades before verdicts are given, judges are widely blamed for acts of nepotism in judicial appointments and promotions, the present chief justice himself followed on the footsteps of his father and was installed in the CJI position by men handpicked as judges in the past by his father, and the UPA-II initiative to introduce a Judicial Services Commission a la the Public Services Commission to install the best brains in the judicial system was scuttled during Modi’s period as Prime Minister.
Reason, obviously, is that he did not want to take courage in his hands and challenge the vested interests in the judiciary. Following up on the British Raj, the judicial officers are treated as sacred cows, and they are the last word over and above the elected leader of the nation too by resort to strange interpretations of law. Overall, however, the judiciary is not standing in the way of major policy decisions of the executive, as in the case of abrogation of Article 370, which was in the best national interests.
While Modi has acquitted himself honourably in the last ten years, the reverse is true of the BJP chief ministers.
Be it Devendra Fadnavis, BS Yeddiyurappa, Manohar Lal Khattar or the series of CMs after Modi in Gujarat, they failed to make a mark and are widely perceived to be below average when it came to performance. They coursed through shallow waters. They were, like Modi, not confrontationist. They bore with the system failures or flaws. They survived on Modi’s support.
An exception was Chouhan, who built around him the support from the BCs, helping him and the BJP win power repeatedly in Madhya Pradesh. Even the 2018 assembly polls were not a washout for the BJP in MP. It won more votes than the Congress but got a few seats less – 114 for Congress and 109 for the BJP, with BSP winning two seats and others five. Chouhan unseated the Congress government in 15 months’ time, re-grabbed power and retained governance for the BJP.
He, or the PM, won the 2023 elections for the BJP with a huge majority – 163 for BJP against 66 for the down-and-out Congress led by Kamal Nath, who has a shady past. All the same, other than his work for the agricultural community and the poor, and other than for the highways built by the Centre, Madhya Pradesh under Chouhan had never been in the news for any major governance feat.
Chouhan’s failure to build an image for himself beyond his state might or might not work to his advantage in his future course in politics. Performance is not the yardstick for the BJP to choose prime ministers or chief ministers. Fact is, no one had expected of Modi to do so well when he was nominated by the BJP for the PM post. Had it been otherwise, the RSS that brought Modi upfront would have faced the brunt of public anger thereof.
Who the next prime minister would be is a big question.
Perceptions are that Modi would win the 2024 polls for the BJP and facilitate the installation of another leader as PM. He had said in 2014 that he wanted to be PM for two terms to change the face of India. He succeeded to an extent, but not to impressive levels. He retained status quo for most part. He is not ready to bell the cat or challenge the vested interests that are having increased levels of sway over all sectors of governance. Modi is not seen as personally corrupt, but the huge scams in the national highways spent, and the like, points to the ugly underbelly of the BJP rule under Modi. Where the money went is anybody’s guess. No one however suspects Modi filled his pockets. This is Modi’s principal strength even today.
The line-up for the next PM, in case Modi opts out, includes Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and perhaps JP Nadda. Both Nadda and Chouhan, based on their track-record, might not be able to work the nation to a frenzy as Modi could. Yogi could. Yogi has an individuality of his own, but a problem could be that he cannot be an orderly for the RSS. Yogi would chart his own course. Modi a baniya is tactful but not confrontationist. Yogi a Kshaktriya has the grit in him to challenge those within and without. Pakistan be forewarned. Trust him to fire volleys at Pakistan at the first opportunity. It is not for him the Chai diplomacy Modi practised in Lahore with his Pakistan counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. Nor is Yogi the right choice to fool around with world leaders the way Modi revelled at. Worse, consider Manohar Lal Khattar as the next PM pick for the RSS!
Notably, this time, by installing a Yadav as the next CM of Madhya Pradesh, BJP sent out the right signals to the backward communities who were, of late, being wooed by the Congress party by dangling the carrot of “caste census”—an idea possibly promoted by Bihar’s Kursi Kumar, or Nitish Kumar, who now fancies again to be the next Prime Minister. Caste Census by itself means nothing. Those who seek it are, in principal, seeking a fair share for their communities in the governmental apparatus, the establishment as a whole. The backward communities have fewer representation in government jobs, and too little in its higher echelons, the academia, the judiciary and the bureaucracy. Promising the caste census by itself does not mean this goal is near at hand.
The Congress party had a reputation of dumping the Mandal Commission Report in the cupboards of the central secretariat. Its implementation was finally done by a straggler in politics like VP Singh when he had a brief stint as Prime Minister. The BJP joined hands with the Congress to drive VP out of power. History stands testimony to all such shenanigans at the highest political levels. So, who would trust whom in the next Parliament elections!
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