It's make-or-break year and BJP chief Venkaiah Naidu is a man imbued with a mission. Speaking to party spokespersons from all states and other party functionaries dealing with the press a few days ago, the BJP chief exhorted them to craft a new media strategy. Because communication, he said, was crucial. The very next day, to an audience of state leaders from poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi, Naidu ‘clarified’ the BJP’s message: the party will contest the assembly polls on the basis of — it must no more be apologetic about — its ‘own’ agenda. For the hopelessly uninitiated, that means Article 370, uniform civil code and Ayodhya, not necessarily in that order. So, armed with a brand new communication strategy and a not-so-new message, the BJP is all set to sail into electoral battle.Or so it would seem. Putting it plainly, the BJP’s media-managers have a tough year ahead. While communication is important, it is not entirely to be confused with spin. It’s a two-way street: from the other end will come demands for accountability, openness and honesty. Demands, above all, for a clarity of message. And on that particular count, the BJP is saddled with a peculiar incoherence, further aggravated by Gujarat. Always a party caught uncomfortably between the past and the present, now it must also search for a new equilibrium between the state and the Centre. There’s the temptation to win the state, a la Gujarat, by an aggressive assertion of Hindutva or Moditva. And, in the same moment, the compulsion to keep the NDA together at the Centre by tagging disclaimers to the same.The BJP’s spin-doctors may face another problem as they try to, as Naidu tells them to, ‘‘bring the electronic and print media on the party’s line on various issues.’’ The BJP has shown itself to be a party with an irresistible urge to target the messenger; resisting that temptation will be no mean task. English media houses, Naidu reportedly remarked in the course of the same lecture, were against the party because ‘‘they appear to be in tune with British colonialism’’. Somewhere down this year, the BJP will hopefully do a reality check. Hopefully, it will also realise that the media, in the last instance, is but the courier. The party would do better to concentrate more on addressing the people.
