Both are faster now: The rise of a man who
has turned the next General Elections into a referendum on the future of
a Nation long Abandoned and the fall of a regime that
has already retired from the mind of India. The man, as salesman of
India Unbound and the prophet of a Congress-less India,
has been on a roll for a while; he has changed the syntax of argument in one of
the world's most voluble democracies. The velocity of his ascent is
more than a mark of his success as a proselytizer and provocateur in
a country impatient for change; it shows how the most ambitious and
audacious in politics has harvested the resentment of India.
The story of the fallen is a
parable of power wasted and people conned; it
tells why the chances of redemption are remote in spite of the stirrings of
renewal within. The Narendra Modi juggernaut has been
conquering the mind space of India and Manmohan Singh-led UPA regime
has been undergoing the most devastating political atrophy of
our time.
Within just six months of being
declared as BJP's official PM candidate, with the measure of his
leadership, NDA for the first time is expected to cross
the 200 mark in the upcoming battle for supremacy. And it is all more
important at a time when India's woes are of a nation not led but left
to drift. The success of Modi in turning a moribund party steeped
in defeatism into a possible party of governance is all about
a leader who animates the base and answers India's call for a change.
It is not just about the well governed state of Gujarat, whose performance is
better than the national average. Modi's appeal that he will make the best
Prime Minister lies in his success as the voice of a nation hurt and
humiliated.
BJP of the moment, swaying to the
soundtrack of Modi on the stump, to a greater extent is closer to the Congress
that once danced to the passions and paranoia of Indira Gandhi.
There was a time between 2004 and 2013, when BJP looked like a lost group of
individuals. When the party required a leader, it offered many but their vision
did not extend beyond the make-believe they inhabited. Looming over them,
though was the tallest of them all, still struggling to reduce the distance
between destiny and destination. His belief in the exceptionalism of his
biography, which alone he thought validated his ambition, was deeper than his
faith in the future of BJP. The eldest leader who refused to accept his own
redundancy and the gaggle of little leaders with exaggerated ideas about
themselves made BJP a Babelic House, still unsure about reclaiming the lost
space.
While the 11, Ashoka Road address was moving away from the ideas and aspirations of the twenty first century India,
elsewhere in Gujarat, one BJP chief minister was constantly. He has outlived
all possible obstacles including an insane riot in 2002. He was one
of those very few politicians who never underestimated the uses of adversity
and who knew how to update his test to suit the national, or even global
context. So, in the afterglow of 9/11, the politics of fear was at
its peak, terror dominated his stump speech and he spoke to India though
the stage was Gujarat. When the extraterritorial misadventures of Gen. Pervez
Musharraf challenged India, he wasted no time in tapping the national anger (when
Race Course Road and Janpath residents were hiding in the bushes). Last
September, when he made himself inevitable for the party, it was the outsider's
(who once ran a tea stall) ultimate triumph. After decades, here is a
leader who enjoys a celebrity status across all classes in India. Advani or no
Advani, Rajnath Singh or no Rajnath Singh, for the first time after 2004, BJP
has acquired a leader whose worth is threatening to go beyond
the party apparatus. In India, BJP had almost lost the cultural as well as the
economic argument, till Modi himself became the argument. His
argument is about the economy, an argument he is so confident of winning.
He has almost won it actually. Dr Manmohan Singh (the man
who has been acting as PM), consistently "poor" in his ratings
has also made it easier for Modi. Ten years ago when he became the chosen one
in that Central Hall melodrama, he had all
the qualifications to be the Moderniser India was waiting for
: A technocrat who led the freedom
movement of the Indian market, an apolitical
politician in a party of warhorses and
vulpine veterans, an outsider totally
unaffected by the worst instincts of real politics. In his first 5 years, he was
a voice of moderation and modernity. Ten years on, he is the man
who failed India and himself. The
ease with which he reminded India of what a leader should not be, would surely
be the best thing he has given to its people.
Now a time has come
when most people have absolutely nothing good to say about the man or the
government he leads. This also proved to be true during the recent state
elections, where the Grand Old party faced a rout (by
heavy margins from BJP and the debutant AAP). He is taking the party down with
him. Ten years ago, the magnitude of BJP's defeat was bigger than the victory
of Congress. In 2014, it looks like the Congress debacle will
be bigger than the probable gains of BJP.
That is why
when Rahul Gandhi promises a perestroika within Congress, the
stoic stillness of Dr Manmohan Singh magnifies the enormity of his task. It is
one of the cruelest paradoxes of Indian politics : The man who owes
everything to the benevolence of the dynasty has ensured that the crown will
remain unattainable to the prince for a longer time. More than the Modi
wave, it is the legacy of Dr Singh that Rahul has to survive. The party is yet
to catch up with the mind of this Gandhi for whom politics is not a struggle
for power but a permanent struggle to come to terms with being a Gandhi.
India is now left
with just two options - the kinetic Modi & the meditative Gandhi. The
newly empowered third man - well, India's most common man, has not taken his
revolution from the streets of Delhi to the length & breadth of the
country. Even if Mr Kejriwal is already the third man, above
Manmohan Singh & Sonia Gandhi, AAP is still not the choice of the
countryside. The idea of every-citizen-is-a-government has
not gone down too well with everyone.
It is the Last
Mile that makes the difference. But still Modi needs to sweep those
two states where the enemy is not Congress but well-entrenched socialists and
casteists. For Modi, to win UP and Bihar is to win India. Apart from
the left, none of the currently unattached regional parties are suffering from
incurable saffron phobia. He can choose his friends wisely. So come this summer, the
greatest Indian political thriller will feature either the man who made history
or the man who missed history.
Narendra
Modi is still the story...
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