In any race, sprinters will agree, the advantages of an early lead are many. You are high on confidence, you set the pace for others, you attract early bets, et cetera. The disadvantage is just one: fear of a burnout while the finishing line is still far.
Let's hope this is not going to happen with Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi anytime soon. Patterns emerging out of recent news reports suggest otherwise though.
According to reports, the latest of his rallies in Madhya Pradesh, the first leg of his final tours in the poll-bound state, were far from successful. His November 18 rally in Bhopal saw a mere 7,000 people.
The sprawling Dussehra Maidan in Bhopal, the venue of the rally, was empty. According to a news report, a local BJP leader managed to mobilise a crowd of 2,000 students from a local college, saving the day for the party leadership.
Modi's other rallies in Sagar, Chattarpur and Guna all attracted a poor turnout, which, the report said, left the party leadership worried and its PM nominee upset.
An impact of this is visible in the party leadership taking extra measures to make Modi's Agra rally on Thursday a success. To keep the focus on Modi, the BJP has set up an exhibition at the rally venue in Agra, chronicling Modi's rise from a tea-seller to party PM nominee.
Those who attend the rally will also have another incentive - a mobile vegetable store, called the NaMo Vegetable Market, which is selling vegetables at a subsidised rate.
One of the many reasons behind the crowds going away from Modi rallies may be his inability to sustain the hype his party has created around him. He has for sure not been able to invent a poll narrative which offers the crowd anything more than mere vitriolic rhetoric against the Congress first family.
For example, the tea-seller parable, dropped unwittingly into the arena by Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agarwal, had a good shelf life of a week. Modi used it to his advantage and gained full marks. But, like everything else, even rhetoric comes with an expiry date. Novelty therein will be the key to the door of the 16th Lok Sabha.
But his silence on the snooping allegations against him and his confidant Amit Shah is certainly not stoic in the public eye. A man best known for launching the foulest of diatribes against his political rivals should have the ability to speak at least, even if not come clean, when the dice takes a turn for the worse. Modi has not spoken a word on the controversy yet.
His frequent slip-ups exacerbate matters more. After a point, even his party has stopped issuing clarifications that it was not Mohanlal...err, that he meant, etc. The future PM of India is supposed to know the name of the Father of the Nation. People do forgive slip-ups, but the slip-ups that not even ones kids make, and certainly not one every week!
His rally in Agra on Thursday is an even bigger challenge.
The Braj region, which has a total of 8 Lok Sabha constituencies, is crucial to the BJP. The party's ally Kalyan Singh has been busy working overtime to make the rally a success. The area is his region.
However, all eyes will be on how Modi reacts to the Muzaffarnagar riots here and also the proposed felicitation of two party MLAs, Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, accused of instigating violence, at the venue.
That the Jats of the region will be present at the venue in a majority makes it even tougher a task for Modi to deal with the delicate subject.
To compound BJP's problems, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav will be holding a rally in Bareilly at the same time. He is expected to take on the saffron party for its alleged complicity in fanning the Muzaffarnagar riots.
With Lok Sabha polls still a good 5-6 months away, the biggest challenge for Modi comes from his own pace. The early points gained will be frittered away if not harnessed by reinventing both the rhetoric and the campaign.
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