When PM took over Vajpayee

It didn’t happen. The Prime Minister’s speech was prosaic. There was no metaphor or poetry, no eloquent take-off. Even the trademark overlong pauses were missing. In unadorned sentences, Vajpayee spoke of the need to put Delhi back on the map — ‘‘nowadays foreign visitors are taken to Bangalore and Hyderabad first’’, he taunted without enthusiasm. (And without irony, given that Bangalore belongs to a Congress-ruled state).

He spoke of the need for an ‘‘alert and problem-solving government’’ in Delhi. A government, moreover, that can work with the Centre. He reeled off the ‘‘achievements’’ of the NDA Government: the working coalition, the four-lane highway, free and fair J&K election. He didn’t take Sheila Dikshit’s name and joined issue with Sonia Gandhi for describing the NDA Government’s record as ‘‘vinash (destruction)’’. As he picked up on the Vinash vs Vikas theme, for a while there, one saw a flash of vintage Vajpayee. But it was gone before it could rouse his placid audience.

All through the campaign for the four state elections, they say Vajpayee has not really been Vajpayee-esque. He has performed indifferently to dwindling crowds, especially in Delhi and Rajasthan. Though the Prime Minister touched down in all four states, and though he showcased the achievements of the Government at the Centre, this time he did not make himself the centrepiece of the campaign or these elections a referendum on his government. Poll watchers agree that the PM could not define this campaign, nor did he make much of an effort to. In each state, local politics was left largely free to run its course.

The Prime Minister was lugging a dilemma around with him, observes academic and columnist Pratap Bhanu Mehta. ‘‘He had to give the message that his policies at the Centre are good for the states and, at the same time, show that the Congress governments in the states have not performed.’’

But what do you do if you are a prime minister going into elections that are widely expected to go against your party, ask others who tracked Vajpayee’s campaign. And even in the state that is supposed to be going the BJP’s way, that is Madhya Pradesh, it is not believed to be because of you. So you are careful to keep your head above the mud and grime of battle, even while you defend your party. You make an effort to distance yourself from the results.

Also, points out Yogendra Yadav, political scientist with the Centre for Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, ‘‘Vajpayee is shrewd enough to know that the BJP’s defeat in these polls may not be such bad news for him personally. Some of the pressure from his party to advance the general election will be reduced.’’

By all accounts, Vajpayee did not throw himself into this campaign with conviction or poetry. But, at the same time, the prime minister’s campaign became distinctive in another sense: for its faithful focus on developmental issues. To Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Vajpayee went armed with statistics of child mortality, women’s mortality, malnutrition. In Chhattisgarh, he spoke of double standards on corruption, but also spoke at length on developing the health sector and roads. In Rajasthan, he lamented its BIMARU status. Nearly everywhere, he mentioned the four-lane highway and the project to link rivers.

Is there a message there? Mehta believes there is a sense in which Vajpayee’s BJP was also trying to project itself as a professional, mature organisation, in calculated contrast to the leader-centred Congress. An organisation, moreover, that recognises that it must operate on two different timelines. One, the broad social movement which has the temple as objective. And two, the political party in a coalition that must fight elections at a time when Hindutva may have lost its edge as an electoral issue and when it requires a longer build-up or a precipitating event to regain it.

But whatever the reasons, or results, assembly elections 2003 are likely to be put down as the contest when Vajpayee did not become the centre of his own campaign. And when issues of development and governance filled that space.