BYPOLL RESULTS: A CAUTION TO MODI ON BIRTHDAY EVE

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have a sober birthday tomorrow, September 17. For a man whose hopes of a resounding encore of the general elections in the bypolls results of which were out today were mercilessly shattered, sobriety is the forced reprieve. The chronicle of how today unfolded in the collective consciousness of India will be re-told for some time to come. The question the Modi-besotten or Modi-fearing media asked even as the counting of votes began in the three Lok Sabha seats and 33 assembly seats which went to by-elections on September 13 was not ‘’how many seats’’ but ‘’how much margin’’. For them, a full encore was a foregone conclusion. Until things began to unfold. The BJP lost two seats in Gujarat where Modi had vowed that no seat would ever go to the opposition, specially the Congress. The BJP lost three in Rajasthan, where the BJP secured a brute majority in the assembly elections and topped it by winning all Lok Sabha seats. The chunks in the armour were beginning to show. The counting was in high gear, the media and political pundits hastily began to look for new logic to explain the reversal. The BJP spokespersons were looking for convincing answers. Those of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party were equally clueless; it took them time to register that the trends were in their favour. So deep was the nadir the general election results threw them in in May, 2014 that their reflexes were slow in coming to grips with the faint but firm indication of a reversal. Oridinarily, results of by-elections are to be taken in stride. For any political party, they are rarely a reflection or a continuation of a previous electoral success. In assembly by-elections in particular, local issues come to the fore and determine the outcome to a large extent. The “national” is not really an issue. However, this time the BJP needlessly made an issue out of it. Coming as the by-elections did immediately after the Modi government completed 100 days in office, the BJP was intent on using every opportunity as a referendum on what it thought to be an irrefutable allegiance of the Indian people to the ways of Modi. Falling from such a vantage height really hurts. The hurt is specially vile in the case of Uttar Pradesh. The state had given 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats to BJP, nay, Modi. The Akhilesh Yadav government in the state was humbled beyond recognition, denuded of any reputation at all, and pummelled into political submission. Of the 11 assembly seats which went for by-elections, the Samajwadi Party romped home in eight. The BJP in 3. The figures don’t tell the whole story. To quickly elaborate, the BJP lost in Rohaniya, which is in the district of Varanasi, Modi’s new electoral citadel. It lost in Charkhari, which falls in the area of influence of the BJP’s rabble-rouser, Uma Bharathi. Why? Quite easy to answer if you are not a contaminated political pundit or a media person. Let’s run through them. These are initial explanations, but let’s leave the reflections for later. One, The BJP went into the by-elections as an over-confident, even arrogant, contender. The New BJP president, Amit Shah, showed his true colours of a lumpen, as he bawled his way through the state, specially in western Uttar Pradesh, unafraid of rousing communal sentiments. Shah and his cohorts, of the variety of Laxmi Kant Bajpeyi, were quite candid that they did not need the Muslim vote to win the by-elections. But they did not see the glitch in their assumption. Shah, who escaped prison, thanks to certain political and investigative coincidences, failed to realise that BJP and Modi were two separate entities in the minds of a large section of the Indian population which propelled him to power in May, 2014. The segment of the secular voter in Uttar Pradesh which was too enamoured of him and his promise of a new India chose to back him despite his credentials as a BJP-ite. That secular voter had in the last 100-odd days had enough time to reflect, concluding largely that Modi’s party continued to be communal, brazenly anti-secular and least interested in issues not related to its right-wing ideology. That voter was angry. Two, a sizeable section of the people which voted for Modi in May, 2014 were carried away by his “achche din” promises. However, that was not the case even after 100 days in power. The BJP had conveniently forgotten how within a week – seven days – of Arvind Kejriwal becoming chief minister of Delhi it had publicly humiliated him, asking to explain why he had not fulfilled his promises. The BJP must now be realising that a week is much more than 100 days. Three, by May, 2014 Modi had generated a sentiment of raw awe in his favour. He could do no wrong. He could achieve anything if brought to power. He was the panacea for all ills. He alone deliver them out of their decade-long misery. You are riding a tiger if you escalate people’s expectations beyond logical limits There may have been some saner elements within the BJP, but even collectively they perhaps did not have the courage to tell Modi to tone down. The BJP will certainly come up with some logical explanations for the defeats. But once the media mikes have left the BJP headquarters, once the leaders are back in a huddle behind locked doors, once Modi lives through his birthday explaining to the visiting Chinese President Gujarat’s links to Buddhism, chopsticks and for good measure, oyster sauce, the time for real reckoning will come. It is then that Modi and BJP will have to get their act together with just one end in mind: not to throw away the people’s gift of power. The by-election results are the amber at the ideological traffic junction.