Opinion The BJP needs help
But,last weeks performance during the concluding days of Parliaments Budget Session exceeded anything that has happened before
The people in charge of making political strategy in the Bharatiya Janata Party at the national level,need to be put out to grass in some very remote rural outpost as soon as possible. After this happens,the BJP must organise one of its famous chintan shivirs not just to think about where the party is going but to actually worry about the directionless meanderings that have defined its course since the 2004 general election was lost. So purposeless has the BJPs role become as our main opposition party that we have grown accustomed to it making a racket about the wrong issues and remaining silent about real ones. But,last weeks performance during the concluding days of Parliaments Budget Session exceeded anything that has happened before. On the day that the Finance Minister asked the Lok Sabha to pass his Rs 12.58 lakh crore Budget,the BJP walked out because it thought the WikiLeaks cables were more important.
If this is not bizarre behaviour,it is hard to think what is? Was there not one person in the BJP who noticed anything in the Budget that was worth asking some questions about? What about just asking the Finance Minister why he continues to spend
Rs 40,000 crore on MGNREGA when he knows,from members of Sonia Gandhis own National Advisory Council (NAC),that half this money is being lost annually due to corrupt practices? What about a few questions on the NAC itself like whether it has a constitutional right to use taxpayers money to pay for its very expensive and very leaky schemes?
What about asking the Finance Minister what he has done to ensure proper storage facilities for the bumper harvest that is about to come? How can he allow the NAC to come up with a massive food security scheme without first investing in better storage facilities? What about asking what measures the Finance Minister has taken to stop wasting money on public sector companies like Air India?
That the BJP believes that these things are not as important as the WikiLeaks revelations is beyond belief. The leaked cables reveal only what we already know,what has already been discussed in Parliament,that there was an attempt made to buy support for Dr Manmohan Singhs government in 2008 when his government faced a no confidence vote. The cables also reveal that Shri L K Advani assured American officials that if he became prime minister in 2009 he would not reverse the Indo-US nuclear deal because the BJPs public opposition to it was just a sham.
He did not,sadly for him,become prime minister in 2009 and in this could lie the crux of the BJPs problems. When Dr Manmohan Singh taunted Mr Advani,during the WikiLeaks debate,about him believing it was his birthright to become prime minister in 2004,he was more right than he probably realised. So baffled by the election results was the BJPs ageing rathyatri that he turned to astrologers for solace and they gave it. As always,they spoke in half measures so poor old Mr Advani was comforted by their accurate prediction that Sonia Gandhi would never become prime minister. What they failed to tell him was that nor would he,so he has continued to dream on. And,in dreaming,has forgotten the need to build the party.
The defeat in the 2009 general election should have made the BJPs senior leaders realise that they needed to seriously analyse what was going wrong but this has not happened yet. So nobody has so far noticed that the BJP can win only when it stops behaving like a clone of the Congress Party. Where its chief ministers have shown (Gujarat comes instantly to mind) that they really have something new to offer,they win again and again.
Narendra Modi dazzled an audience of Delhi liberals at the India Today conclave earlier this month because he outlined a clear vision of India as a great power in the near future if it capitalised on its three main strengths: democracy,a functioning judiciary and a huge population of young people. He then explained in detail the things he had done to make Gujarat the fastest growing state in India. He talked of innovative agricultural schemes,education reforms,schemes to provide electricity in villages and his governments investment friendly policies. Why are the BJPs national leaders not seeking his advice on how to move forward?
Without new advisors,new policies and a new vision for India (sans Hindutva),the future looks bleak. The BJPs abysmal failure as our main Opposition party,despite seven years of practice,is one of the reasons why the Prime Minister continues to get away with the very bad government he has given us in his second term in office.
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