We may be a little short of a year from the next general election, but the election season has already engulfed the country. All the parties are carrying out their positioning exercises and, no doubt, taking stock of their monetary reserves. As Gopinath Munde has disclosed, elections are a very expensive business in India.
No party has moved with greater determination and sense of purpose than the country’s principal Opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP). In the past year, it has changed its president, nuanced its state leadership and fine tuned its national executive. More important, they have brought their “ great white hope” Narendra Modi forward as the head of the election campaign committee, which in reality makes him their prime ministerial candidate. So focused has been the party that it has brooked little opposition, even that of its patriarch L. K. Advani.
Yet, we don’t have a clear answer to the simple question: Does the BJP deserve the support of the electorate in the 2014 general election? There are a lot of negative reasons to vote for the party. The United Progressive Alliance has made a mess of things, especially after it was brought back to power after the 2009 general election. First, there are the succession of charges of corruption. It began with the 2G furore, meandered through the Commonwealth Games and Adarsh housing society scams, and peaked with the coal field allotment bungle. There are already quite a few voices arguing that the gas price revision announced by the government last week is the latest item on the list.
The second issue is the lassitude of the government. UPA- 2 has found it uncommonly difficult to take decisions. It has not been just a matter of the Opposition barracking Parliament. Though there has been talk of revising the rules limiting FDI in some sectors for the past decade or so, the UPA has made haste slowly. In December 2011, the government removed the 51 per cent cap on FDI in single brand retail and permitted foreign investors to make 100 per cent investments.
But it took another year before it announced that it would permit 51 per cent investment in multi- brand retail. And in June 2013, it is still tinkering with the rules to attract skittish investors. The Arvind Mayaram Committee has come up with a slew of recommendations that are yet to be implemented. It has recommended the increase of FDI limit to 49 per cent in defence and 74 per cent in multi- brand retail.
One reason for this is that the government faces opposition from within, not just on the issue of FDI, but issues like the anti- rape bill, or the marriage law bills. While the cabinet is a forum for discussion and differing views are expected to be aired, what has been striking is the level of opposition that prime minister Manmohan Singh faces from relatively junior colleagues.
But in the case of the UPA, at least we know about its policies, perspectives and tolerance of corruption. We know about its views on economic reform, the food security bill, or measures like the national rural guarantee employment scheme. With the BJP there is a big blank. We really do not know whether the BJP, at least the one presided over by Rajnath Singh, really supports any enhancement of the FDI limits.
Whether it is infrastructure development, FDI, trade policy, social welfare measures, industrial policy, disinvestment, foreign investment limits in insurance and banking, or pension reform, we simply do not know where the BJP stands. Indeed, one has the impression that the BJP itself doesn’t know and that its stand is determined at the last minute and is based usually on opportunistic calculations.
The party has had no problems in going back on almost everything it once stood for. A case in point is the Indo- US nuclear deal. While the government headed by the party initiated the key talks that led to the next steps in strategic partnership ( NSSP) and the nuclear deal, it vehemently opposed the deal itself for no reason other than the fact that it was being piloted by the Congressled UPA government in the 2005- 2008 period.
Likewise, the party does not seem to have the relentless determination to resolve disputes with Pakistan and China that characterised the Vajpayee government.
It is true that an Opposition party, and that, too, one which is headed for an election will make cost- benefit calculations in adopting a stand, rather than be moved by issues like consistency. But there is a point beyond which such calculations take on the air of cynical opportunism, rather than tactical virtue.
BJP state chief ministers like Narendra Modi in Gujarat and Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh have been praised extensively for their executive abilities and have a reputation for acting decisively to get things done. But we still do not have a clear picture of their larger perspective. Mr Modi is known to be a favourite of the corporate sector, but whether he is open to FDI is moot. Again, we know that he shares his tough views on Pakistan with the BJP’s predecessor Jana Sangh, but whether he also has similar views on China is not clear.
Indeed, there is another reason why we must restate our question as to whether the party deserves the support of the electorate.
That is its attitude towards the investigation of the extra- judicial killings that took place in Gujarat in the 2002- 2006 period. Instead of taking the high road and declaring that “ justice will take its own course”, party spokesmen have vehemently insisted that the whole thing is a conspiracy targeting Modi. And as if to show its contempt for the process, Amit Shah, who is out on bail in one of these cases, has been tasked to head the party’s campaign in Uttar Pradesh.
This is not a happy augury. The only thing that is clear about the BJP’s campaign for the coming election is its determination to win. What new policies it has on offer and what mechanisms it will put in place to check the cancer of corruption, have not been disclosed. What we are being told is that the party is determined to win the next election. Winning is an important part of electoral politics. But it is not, or should not be, the be all and end all.
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