R Jagannathan
Firstpost.comFrom many accounts, the Bharatiya Janata Party is planning to
formally announce Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate . It could happen as early as next month. While we all know that he was the party's de facto nominee, the declaration of Modi as the official nominee after a long-drawn process would be a watershed moment in the history of India's second largest national party.
It is a unique achievement, for the simple reason that in India nominees are of only two kinds: they are either the party boss herself (or himself), or they are the result of a manipulative inner party consensus that has little to do with what party workers want.
Modi has broken the mould.
The BJP is unique among Indian parties for one simple reason and that reason is not Hindutva: it is the only party outside the shadowy Communists parties which is not run by one person or one family. Other parties don't have to declare their PM or even CM nominees because that’s preordained. Everyone knows it's the boss. (Check if BSP or Shiv Sena or AIADMK or Trinamool workers have any doubts about who their CM nominee would be). The BJP's internal heartburn in recent months over Modi's candidature is directly related to the fact that it is different. The party leadership is not an inherited heirloom or private property.
Non-family political concerns have to find a way to elect their leaders. The interesting thing is Modi has found a way to make the BJP to take note of his candidature without following the murky consensus route. His impending nomination can be compared to an American-style primary executed in an entirely Indian way and even without an actual vote. In the process, he has also made the next Lok Sabha race a presidential one.
Consider how the American primary system works. First, candidates declare their interest in the job. Next, they woo the party's core constituencies, who are often unrepresentative of the average voter, and more extreme in their views. In this phase, candidates try to paint themselves as true believers. In the Republican party, you end up wooing the born-agains, the Tea Party, the Pat Buchanans, the small business community, etc. Among democrats, it is often about wooing the Left-liberal constituency first before moving rightwards towards the end.
As a candidate starts winning key primaries and obtains endorsements from powerful politicians within the party, he or she starts shifting positions. Former extreme positions are de-emphasised to indicate openness and flexibility to ideas from the middle ground. This continues right till the nomination-after which they finally pitch themselves against whatever the rival represents.
Now consider the parallels in the BJP. In India, we don't like candidates declaring their ambitions openly. Even Modi didn’t, but the mere fact that he began projecting himself as a leader is being held against him. LK Advani's efforts to scuttle Modi’s applecart did not attract criticism of Advani's boorish tactics, but Modi got roundly slammed-even by the Congress-for denying the old man his due.
There are other parallels with American style primaries. Candidates pitch themselves by getting the grassroots to come and vote for them, and then conquer the party by winning state after state. Modi did the same. He lit a fire under the BJP's central leadership by demonstrating his clout with mid-and lower level party workers and demonstrated his popularity. Then he went after the states, starting with his own.
The Gujarat assembly election last December was the first primary, where a home state endorsed its favourite son. Next he began the wooing of special interest groups and hardliners. Even as the RSS vacillated (preferring collective leadership to individual projection), Modi encouraged his followers to demonstrate his popularity at various party and non-party forums-his address to Delhi's Shriram College of Commerce being one such instance.
This forced the Sangh to see his strengths and soon it came around to singing his virtues. Modi, for his part, kept his own lines of communication with Nagpur open, and signed them up finally. This is why when Advani went into his famous sulk before the party’s Goa conclave, he found no purchase and the RSS convinced him to pipe down and smoke the peace pipe with Modi.
After being made campaign committee chief towards the end of June, Modi moved further to secure his right-flank. While he declined the Sangh's efforts to directly commit to Ayodhya, his flunky Amit Shah made statements on the Ram mandir. Then came Modi's now-infamous "puppy" comment and his "Hindu nationalist" statement. The Sangh's loyalty was sealed.
But Modi's success in signing up the core constituency was not enough. He has gone ahead to secure the primaries in some more states-though indirectly.
The endorsement and induction of Rajnath Singh as party boss after Nitin Gadkari's exit was really an indirect endorsement by the Uttar Pradesh wing of the party. Despite some cribs by oldies like Murli Manohar Joshi-whose opposition was neutralised by the Sangh-Modi effectively carried UP. The break with Nitish Kumar-a decision which the BJP forced on the JD(U)-is an endorsement from the Bihar unit, which is now more or less pro-Modi. Even Sushil Modi, once a close ally of Nitish Kumar, is now firmly in the Modi camp.
The Maharashtra and Karnataka units were always pro-Modi, as is the Punjab unit, which has the support of the Akalis too. The Haryana, Delhi, Jammu, Jharkhand, Orissa, Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala units will go along with the party consensus and thus be seen as essentially pro-Modi. Goa is a minor holdout, but Manohar Parikkar, despite not being openly anti-Modi, has made it clear that his opposition would be more to the oldies in the party (he called Advani a "rancid pickle" some years ago). As a pro-changer, he has to back Modi.
This leaves the key election-bound states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. While Raman Singh is neutral and would be happy to work with Modi, Vasundhara Raje is aware that the Modi charm may work in the southern fringes of her state which border Rajasthan. It is only Shivraj Singh Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh who is the real holdout against Modi. We will know about this covert rivalry only after the 2014 election, when we know the BJP's numbers.
The short point is this: Modi has effectively won the BJP primaries fair and square without getting the party to actually hold one. The message floating in the wind is simple: the BJP should now formalise the system of primaries both at the centre and the states. It’s simply more transparent and energising.
Meanwhile, Modi's nomination will ensure one more American parallel: the 2014 race will be truly presidential.
The writer is editor-in-chief, digital and publishing, Network18 Group
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