Narendra Modi, The Party Crasher
~~Sylvie Guichard
On Sunday, BJP president Rajnath Singh announced changes in the leadership of the party. Among them was the return of Narendra Modi to the parliamentary board. On Monday, Singh justified this appointment, noting that Modi is a popular chief minister and that "the decision to include him in the parliamentary board... is based on feedback from people". However, the Gujarat chief minister had not been invited to play a role at the national level; he forced his way back in. Singh and the national party elite had to acknowledge his popularity and the willingness of party workers to see him as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
In an interview in April 2012, Arun Jaitley said that "any political party, which has a galaxy of leadership, has to institutionalise a mechanism of selecting its probable prime ministerial face. In other democracies in the world, you have inner-party elections or preliminaries. We, in India, do not have such a system. On the contrary, the best leaders in the party, at an appropriate time, are chosen as the first amongst the equals..."
But how are these best leaders chosen, and by whom? Informally, the RSS plays a role in this choice and formally, the candidate is to be nominated either by the party parliamentary board or by a "top panel" whose members are chosen by the party president. Thus, as Jaitley noted, party activists are not consulted on the selection of the candidate. Yet they cannot be ignored, and Modi seems, indeed, to be the candidate chosen by the BJP and RSS activists. Moreover, opinion polls project a potential majority for Modi in a Modi-against-Rahul-Gandhi contest.
However, the discussion about who the BJP PM candidate will be has been going for a while in the party and is still on, as the official choice has not yet been announced. We know why Modi is a controversial candidate outside the BJP, but what was the discussion within the party about? We can now say "was" as the dust has partially settled after Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, endorsed Modi in February, and after Singh first praised Modi's achievements at the party national council meeting in March and then appointed him to the parliamentary board.
There are several oft-quoted reasons for the reluctance to let Modi play a role at the national level. Some of them concern mainly internal problems: Modi does not abide by the hierarchy, he is overtly ambitious, he is not a team player and he is uncompromising; others are related to electoral strategy: Modi's appeal might not work outside Gujarat and he poses a risk in attracting and keeping coalition partners. The last two points are arguable, as many people outside Gujarat have declared themselves to be in favour of Modi and several political parties have allied with whoever might bring them to power. Yet, there is another, unsaid reason for the reluctance within the party to have Modi as a candidate. It lies in an unresolved tension between the state-units and the national level of the party. This organisational tension translates into a tension between state and national leaders.
State leaders have become essential and vocal in the BJP, but they are kept in secondary roles. The national executive seems to think that it has a natural right to be in command, despite the fact that the political power now lies in the hands of state leaders. They get the votes; they even get the national party elites re-elected from their constituencies. But Modi had to win the elections in Gujarat for the third time to be seriously considered as a potential PM candidate. Without this victory, his chances to be chosen would have been null. Such a criterion did not apply to leaders and potential contenders from the national executive. Little was expected from them in terms of demonstrated popular support.
However, Modi won again in Gujarat and passed the eliminatory test for the national level. Well aware of his power, he did not confine himself to the role of a secondary player. He was not invited in the private national elite club, but he bypassed the opposition of the national leadership by appealing directly to the people. He played the base against the elite in the party (and in the RSS). Bhagwat recognised that indirectly when he said in February: "what is in everybody's heart and mind should be acknowledged by those who have to decide who should lead the nation".
Modi, the regional leader, has come back into the national team as an unavoidable player. This does not suit everybody. Writing about Modi's performance at the BJP conclave in March, Shiv Visvanathan compared him to a "street fighter with a bully boy attitude to opponents". This is not limited to his opponents in the Congress party. We can thus easily imagine that the national executive of the BJP feels uneasy about what might happen to them with Modi in a position to choose "the best leaders in the party".
The writer teaches at the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and is an affiliated researcher at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
In an interview in April 2012, Arun Jaitley said that "any political party, which has a galaxy of leadership, has to institutionalise a mechanism of selecting its probable prime ministerial face. In other democracies in the world, you have inner-party elections or preliminaries. We, in India, do not have such a system. On the contrary, the best leaders in the party, at an appropriate time, are chosen as the first amongst the equals..."
But how are these best leaders chosen, and by whom? Informally, the RSS plays a role in this choice and formally, the candidate is to be nominated either by the party parliamentary board or by a "top panel" whose members are chosen by the party president. Thus, as Jaitley noted, party activists are not consulted on the selection of the candidate. Yet they cannot be ignored, and Modi seems, indeed, to be the candidate chosen by the BJP and RSS activists. Moreover, opinion polls project a potential majority for Modi in a Modi-against-Rahul-Gandhi contest.
However, the discussion about who the BJP PM candidate will be has been going for a while in the party and is still on, as the official choice has not yet been announced. We know why Modi is a controversial candidate outside the BJP, but what was the discussion within the party about? We can now say "was" as the dust has partially settled after Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, endorsed Modi in February, and after Singh first praised Modi's achievements at the party national council meeting in March and then appointed him to the parliamentary board.
There are several oft-quoted reasons for the reluctance to let Modi play a role at the national level. Some of them concern mainly internal problems: Modi does not abide by the hierarchy, he is overtly ambitious, he is not a team player and he is uncompromising; others are related to electoral strategy: Modi's appeal might not work outside Gujarat and he poses a risk in attracting and keeping coalition partners. The last two points are arguable, as many people outside Gujarat have declared themselves to be in favour of Modi and several political parties have allied with whoever might bring them to power. Yet, there is another, unsaid reason for the reluctance within the party to have Modi as a candidate. It lies in an unresolved tension between the state-units and the national level of the party. This organisational tension translates into a tension between state and national leaders.
State leaders have become essential and vocal in the BJP, but they are kept in secondary roles. The national executive seems to think that it has a natural right to be in command, despite the fact that the political power now lies in the hands of state leaders. They get the votes; they even get the national party elites re-elected from their constituencies. But Modi had to win the elections in Gujarat for the third time to be seriously considered as a potential PM candidate. Without this victory, his chances to be chosen would have been null. Such a criterion did not apply to leaders and potential contenders from the national executive. Little was expected from them in terms of demonstrated popular support.
However, Modi won again in Gujarat and passed the eliminatory test for the national level. Well aware of his power, he did not confine himself to the role of a secondary player. He was not invited in the private national elite club, but he bypassed the opposition of the national leadership by appealing directly to the people. He played the base against the elite in the party (and in the RSS). Bhagwat recognised that indirectly when he said in February: "what is in everybody's heart and mind should be acknowledged by those who have to decide who should lead the nation".
Modi, the regional leader, has come back into the national team as an unavoidable player. This does not suit everybody. Writing about Modi's performance at the BJP conclave in March, Shiv Visvanathan compared him to a "street fighter with a bully boy attitude to opponents". This is not limited to his opponents in the Congress party. We can thus easily imagine that the national executive of the BJP feels uneasy about what might happen to them with Modi in a position to choose "the best leaders in the party".
The writer teaches at the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and is an affiliated researcher at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
Courtesy: The Indian Express
