M A I N   N E W S

Vote on Modi brand of politics 
Sarbjit Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service

Ahmedabad, December 11
The entire nation’s eyes are focused on Gujarat and its around three crore voters, who will exercise their franchise tomorrow to decide the fate of the BJP and the Congress, two main contenders for power in the 182- member state Assembly. Polling will be held in 181 constituencies as in one constituency the election has been countermanded following the death of a candidate.

In the last Assembly elections, the BJP had 117 seats.

While the BJP has gone the whole hog, resorting to one of the “ bitterest possible” election campaigns to retain power for the next five years in Gujarat, the Congress, which realised a bit late that Mr Narendra Modi’s government can be removed from the saddle, fired all cylinders in the last week of campaigning.

Mr Arun Jaitley, who was in charge of the BJP election campaign, says his party will do “exceedingly well in the elections” and his counterpart from the Congress, Mr Kamal Nath, asserts the election results will surprise all. The BJP was earlier hopeful of a landslide and the Congress, that started the campaign half-heartedly, now talks about the formation of the next government in the state.

While casting the ballot tomorrow, Gujaratis will not only exercise their democratic right, but will answer some of the most politically complex and sensitive questions. Some of these are: can elections be won by politicising violence, terrorism and dividing the electorate on communal lines as has been fiercely attempted by the BJP in this state ? Is there any future for the Modi brand of politics in India? How much weightage do people give to basic issues such as development, prosperity, growth, peace and harmony ?

The BJP, which pressed as many as 40 national-level and hundreds of junior leaders for campaigning, not only politicised the Godhra carnage but made use of it to the hilt in the campaign to exploit the emotions of the Hindu community that was rattled by the incident in February this year. The BJP’s election game plan was designed and executed by Mr Narendra Modi, who not only overshadowed giant-size BJP leaders like Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mr L.K. Advani, but also dictated terms to the BJP high command as far as the selection of the BJP national leaders for campaigning was concerned.

In 1985, the Congress won 415 Lok Sabha seats under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi by what Mr Jaitley describes “ putting Indira Gandhi’s body before everybody” and targeting a particular minority community. Mr Modi has attempted to use the Godhra carnage for the same purpose.

Mr Modi, according to party sources, had made it clear that only the names cleared by the BJP national leader should campaign in the state. A large number of BJP senior leaders, and almost all leaders of its NDA alliance partners , either stayed away from the campaign or visited the state to mark their token presence.

Mr Modi and VHP leaders left no stone unturned to divide the electorate between: “they (Muslims) and us( Hindus).” A specimen of the extent to which electoral politics has been trivialised was available in the campaign in the state.

Though defensive in the beginning, the Congress also tried to match the BJP’s “high voltage” using almost the “same idiom” but in a different context. It highlighted “that the terrorism of unemployment, hunger, drought and non-performance” was several times more dangerous than the terrorism the BJP had been talking about.

The Congress has been successful, though partially, in highlighting problems of people, including the unavailability of drinking water and jobs. It hit back at Mr Modi by propagating that the BJP government did nothing worthwhile in the past five years, and resorted to “ emotional blackmailing” of the majority community. “ The BJP has neither talked about its performance in the past five years nor what it wants to do in the next five years”, says Mr Kamal Nath.