Why Rajnath called INDIA name khatarnaak: BJP’s ‘India Shining’ dark spot

The Union Defence Minister’s reference was to the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, which had been called by a confident Atal Bihari Vajpayee government early, around the slogan of ‘India Shining’. The BJP had ended up losing, with the Congress emerging as the single largest party. The alliance it formed then, the UPA, went on to rule for the next 10 years.

In his column Rear View in The Indian Express, the late journalist and political commentator Inder Malhotra recounted how Vajpayee, who managed to complete a stint in power only in his third shot at being the Prime Minister, thought he had all his ducks in a row when it came to the polls in 2004.

There was the success in transforming India into a declared nuclear-weapon power while getting the US to start withdrawing the sanctions it imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests (also under Vajpayee). There was the victory against Pakistan in the Kargil War of 1999. And there was the rise in the GDP in the years preceding the election, though hardly of the level that would get pulses racing now. The 2002 Gujarat riots had cast a pall, but the BJP believed it would shine through.

The Congress itself was not too sure it had much of a chance against a PM who was generally well-liked. The BJP had in its corner leaders like the late Pramod Mahajan who were already reimagining political campaigning and was considered the architect of the ‘India Shining’ campaign – Narendra Modi and Amit Shah would go on to hone and polish this into an art form.

Malhotra wrote about back then, people receiving recorded telephone messages saying, “Main Atal Bihari Vajpayee bol raha hun (This is Atal Bihari Vajpayee speaking).”

By 2004, the Congress had been out of government for eight years, having last held power in 1991-1996, when PM P V Narasimha Rao ushered in liberalisation and opened up the economy – which, pointedly, it was not able to translate into rewards in the 1996 polls.

Several experiments with short-lived Janata coalitions, and 13-day and 13-month Vajpayee-led BJP governments followed.

Finally, in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP formed the government, along with allies, after winning 182 seats with 23.75% of the votes polled. The Congress won 114 seats, and 28.30% of the vote share.

Rajnath Singh became a Cabinet minister in the Vajpayee government that was formed.

India Shining campaign

While the 1999 Lok Sabha elections had been held in September-October of that year, the BJP government decided to dissolve Parliament in early 2004 encouraged by positive results in the Assembly elections preceding it. The elections were eventually held in April-May 2004, nearly six months ahead of schedule.

The BJP was estimated to have spent around Rs 150 crore on the ad campaign, implemented by a leading advertising company at the time (Grey Worldwide). This was arguably the biggest poll campaign blitz India had seen till then.

The BJP’s Sudhanshu Mittal, a close associate of Mahajan, would tell India Today later: “The idea was to improve the international image of the party. There was a feeling that India was on the move… and we were hoping that this campaign would help us get more international investment.”

Eventually, the consensus was the campaign missed the mark due to its “lopsided” focus on the urban growth story, while being blind to the distress of the rural landscape.

In hindsight, the Congress, which also took professional help to counter the India Shining campaign, hit the nail on the head with its one-liner question to the BJP’s claims: “Aam Aadmi Ko Kya Mila (What did the common man get)?”

Most advertisements by the Congress even refrained from using colour, a market analysis report noted, to emphasise the bleak picture, and underlined: “Congress ka haath, gareeb ke saath (The Congress is with the poor).”

The NDA eventually managed to get only 188 seats, with the BJP getting 138 seats and 22.16% votes. The Congress and its allies got 219 seats, with the Congress finishing ahead of the BJP with 145 seats and 26.69% vote share. With the support of the Left parties, which bagged 53 seats, the Congress formed the next government.

Ironically, the BJP did not do well even in urban centres in the 2004 elections.

Postscript

In his first press conference after the defeat, then BJP president L K Advani said they accepted the results with all humility, and that these had gone “against all expections”.

But, he added: “I would like the Congress-led coalition government not to misread the people’s fractured verdict as a decisive mandate for any alliance, much less for any single party, and certainly not for any individual. The Congress did not contest the elections with any nationwide pre-poll alliance. Its own seats in the Lok Sabha are only seven more than those of the BJP. The only unequivocal interpretation of the divided verdict of Elections 2004 is that, the people of India expect the new government to follow the path of maximum consensus, not only within the ruling alliance but also with the opposition.

Advani identified “multiple factors” for the defeat, including failure to “forge proper alliances”, “low turnout” in urban seats – “contrary to the general impression, the NDA fared better in the rural areas and the Congress fared better in the urban areas” – and “organizational weaknesses” plus local anti-incumbency”.

He said that while the BJP had made ‘development’ and ‘good governance’ its chief commitment, “it is now clear that these issues did not have the kind of sustained nationwide emotional appeal that would transcend the influence of local or episodic factors… In states like UP and Bihar, where we suffered the most, the influence of caste identity and caste combinations proved more powerful”.

Advani also admitted that “in retrospect, the fruits of development did not equitably reach all sections of our society”.

Finally, the then BJP president came to the “feel good factor” and “India Shining” phraseology of the party campaign. “I would like to admit that the two catchphrases did not benefit us,” he said.

Nobody could deny the “feel good” atmosphere, Advani said, listing “accelerating economic growth”, “sound macroeconomic management”, “a good monsoon”, “achievements in sectors such as IT”, “dip in cross-border terrorism”, “turnaround in the situation in Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East”, and “a new chapter of peace and cooperation with Pakistan”. However, he added, by making “India Shining” the campaign pitch, “we gave an opportunity to our political opponents to highlight other aspects of India’s contemporary reality – poverty and uneven development, unemployment among the youth, problems faced by kisan”.

Advani said that while the BJP was not responsible for these problems, “the negative campaign of the Congress and the Communists succeeded in creating a wedge between our party and a section of the population… and took the focus away from the inspiring vision… of making India a Developed Nation by 2020”.

The BJP president also vowed to stand by the party’s ideology. “The election results have triggered a debate in some quarters about whether the BJP lost because it ‘abandoned its Hindutva issues’. The flip side of the same debate is the argument that the defeat would now send the BJP ‘back to its Hindutva issues’… We remain firm and unapologetic about our espousal of Hindutva.”