Advani does not have Modi’s killer instincts
Advani does not have
Modi’s killer instincts.
Dump him
Looked at the mess the Congress faced in the
next parliamentary poll, according to its
own internal survey,
and how the ambitions of regional players
were now being stoked.
Today’s mail wonders why,
given this scenario,
the BJP should not jettison
its prime ministerial candidate
L.K. Advani
for Gujarat chief minister
Narendra Modi.
You may shirk in horror:
You may shirk in horror:
after all, Advani is erudite,
he focuses on good governance, and though
his political thinking is lucid,
he believes that politics need not entail personal animosities.
In addition,
he is the eldest leader in the party
(ex-PM Vajpayee is too disabled for public life now),
he has served the party and its larger
ideological family for a long time,
and it is his turn to run the country .
If it were only that simple.
Pick up any newspaper,
Pick up any newspaper,
and you see the ruling UPA coalition,
and the dominant Congress party,
exposing another aspect of its weakness and vulnerability
with each passing day
It couldn’t push through its nuclear .
deal
(though its intentions to Muslims is quite clear now);
it can’t stop the world economy slowing down,
and inflation from gaining momentum;
its policy initiatives leave more people dissatisfied than content,
whether it is the farmers’ loan waiver,
the sixth pay commission,
or reservations in higher education;
the freshest thinking it can muster is in
Rahul Gandhi’s latest discover-India itinerary .
An opposition party ought to have chewed
the Congress party up and spat it out by now,
especially if the opposition party is the BJP,
which does not have a record of shying away from aggression.
Instead,
if you turn on the TV you don’t hear
a squeak from the , Opposition;
their routine statements are buried deep in the newspapers;
they are invisible on the ground.
Not only that,
but with Karnataka elections around the corner,
they’ve let the UPA set the agenda.
They should be pillorying the UPA on the rise in prices,
on allowing the Left to dictate to the government
(whether it be the nuclear deal or the
Soviet-style security arrangement for the Olympic torch run
somewhere the whole idea of people’s involvement
seems to have got lost in the world’s largest democracy),
or
even on the fact that farmers continue to kill themselves
despite the Budgetary largesse
that everyone knows will
ultimately prove mis-directed.
Instead, they have let the Congress create the buzz.
First it was with Hogenakkal,
which originated from DMK boss M Karunanidhi
(and ended with him too, coincidentally)
and
which has turned S.M. Krishna overnight
into the tallest leader in Karnataka,
as all the surveys across the
state have shown during the past fortnight.
And
then there’s Priyanka Gandhi.
While everyone has been wringing
their hands over Sarabjit Singh,
our man on Pakistan’s death row,
or menacingly shaking their fingers in warning against
clemency to Mohd Afzal Guru,
she went and met Nalini,
the woman who was part of the team
that assassinated her dad,
the late Rajiv Gandhi.
It was a story broken by
Karnataka’s largest circulating newspaper,
and kudos to the journalists for doing a good job.
The story seized the airwaves
for a complete news cycle.
And
if you read the
letters to the Editor in the newspapers,
the majority of the mail is filled with empathy for
Priyanka,
admiring her courage and generosity
with only a few letters expressing skep , ticism.
Even if it turns out to be just for a moment,
she has etched a positive portrait of herself
and by extension, of her family
(including her “differentpoint- of-view” brother),
onto the hearts of Indian voters,
who are a woefully sentimental lot.
Nalini
apparently
had written several letters to Sonia
over the years
she got the opening when Sonia requested
her sentence be commuted from death to life imprisonment
and this was possibly the provocation for the visit.
It had to have been discussed by the family,
and then a decision conveyed to M.K.
Narayanan, NSA,
who arranged the meeting.
This analysis is less cynical than the fact
that the nation’s leading political family takes
decisions without wider consultation;
Priyanka’s blustery please-respect- mydecision
invokes privacy issues,
but really,
anyone who claims that any move the Gandhi family
makes is not political is, well, cynical.
And
while the Congress is pro-active,
the BJP is quietly competent,
as is Advani’s style.
That will get them a bunch of seats in Karnataka,
and will get them a few more seats than the
Congress in the next parliamentary elections,
but
it is not going to guarantee them power.
For that the party needs killer instinct.
Advani’s leadership has not shown any.
The term killer instinct of course makes
many people think of the
Gujarat chief minister
Narendra Modi,
who, despite being persistently asked
about the Gujarat violence of 2002,
won a tremendous majority in the elections last year.
It ushered in his third term
as head of a state that is flourishing,
where the administration is lively and responsive
despite murmurs of his autocratic ways,
and which used disasters such as plagues and earthquakes
to refashion its urban landscapes.
He has proved bigger than Mayawati.
Commentators will argue that
he is just too polarizing;
that regional parties will not join the NDA
if he is the PM candidate;
that simply put,
India is not ready for Narendra Modi.
Even some in the BJP will say:
Not yet, let him wait his turn, after Advani.
That’s exactly what is known as lack of killer instinct.
There are some who are calculating that even
if there is a hung parliament in 2009,
and a prime minister who is non-Congress, non-BJP,
he will not last more than a year or two,
and then it will be time for Modi,
who would have naturally and smoothly succeeded
to the BJP’s top spot, to go in for the kill.
But to wait in politics is to leave
oneself vulnerable to the vagaries of
an unknowable future.
A coalition government may last five years,
and who knows it may emerge stronger.
Why wait if the opportunity,
in the form of a debilitated Congress and confused
Third Front, presents itself in the immediate future?
The time to strike would be now.
Modi would bring the BJP enough votes
to make a significant difference to their seat
tally in the Lok Sabha.
Many more people admire him than hate him;
nobody is indifferent to him.
The Muslim voter
nowadays despairs that the parties
he traditionally voted for are unreliable;
and in UP, there are too many choices to allow tactical voting.
Modi can make a big difference in UP.
He can bring the BJP to that critical mass in the Lok Sabha,
where the lure of power overcomes allies
who would otherwise want to label Modi as a pariah.
He can return the NDA to power.
Will the BJP will dump Advani for Modi?
Unlikely,
even after his autobiography,
which has opened a Pandora’s Box
on the IC-814 hijack, instead of convincing people
of Advani’s iron will, as it was presumably supposed to.
For the BJP,
it is not yet the proper time to pass the baton;
it is too busy reading My Country, My Life..
Those without killer instinct wait for the proper time.
Those with killer instinct win elections.
Sriram Savarkar
Hinduism is more a way of life than a method of worship.
Dharmo Rakshati Rakshithaha
If you protect Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you.
Hindus, If people slap you once, slap them twice!
Hinduism is more a way of life than a method of worship.
Dharmo Rakshati Rakshithaha
If you protect Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you.
Hindus, If people slap you once, slap them twice!