Modi’s perilous moment

S Nihal Singh

WE are in a transitory phase in the life of the Modi government. The bloom is gone and even as the Chinese economic storm lashes India and world markets and Mr Narendra Modi makes a strategic retreat on his land measure, the Bihar Assembly election is casting a long shadow. Throwing political convention to the winds, he has again invaded lustily into state election campaigning.

What Mr Modi and his team are learning the hard way is that running a country as big and diverse as India is very different from administering a state, and even in the famed placidity of Gujarat, the Patidar agitation is making waves. After the Bharatiya Janata Party’s famous victory in the parliamentary election, there was an understandable euphoria in its camp and the larger Sangh Parivar. By and large, the change was welcomed by the people because the second stint of the United Progressive Alliance coalition had run out of steam and here was a decisive leader taking decisions.

The initial disappointment was the absence of the expected big bang to rejuvenate the economy, Mr Modi showing an uncharacteristic hesitancy. That apart, serious questions have been raised on the BJP’s political management. Although the party secured an enviable majority in the Lok Sabha on its own, trumping a three-decade old trend, it showed a singular lack of good sense in how it went about dealing with the Opposition.

The Congress was badly mauled with 44 seats in the lower House and was licking its wounds. Instead of rubbing in the humiliation it suffered, it would have been a graceful gesture to have given it the official status of Leader of the Opposition. The BJP was riding high and felt no need to make gestures to opposition parties. In the process, the government forgot that it lacked a majority in the Rajya Sabha with a strong Congress presence, with Mr Modi attacking the problem in another way by becoming the main campaigner in Assembly elections. Indeed, the BJP did remarkably well in the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, but the process of change in the Upper House, based on a party’s strength in legislatures, will take time.

The BJP’s attitude therefore effectively closed the door to cooperation with the Congress to help pass essential legislation, with the grand old party responding by mounting a boycott of Parliament’s monsoon session,taking a leaf out of the BJP’s own book while in opposition. Essential Bills such as the goods and services measure and the amended land initiative fell by the wayside. Indeed, the Opposition feasted on the BJP’s version of the land Bill successfully painting the party as anti-farmer, with Mr Modi finally seeing the writing on the wall.

Perhaps Mr Modi was a captive of his experiences in Gujarat where he got the better of opposition members by various means, including their suspension from the Assembly. In his attempt firmly to plant the flag of the Modi way of doing things, he forgot that the parliamentary form of government is built on a measure of give and take and antagonising important elements of the Opposition is to work towards a stalemate. The Parliamentary Affairs Minister’s appeals to seek cooperation were too timid and too late. Mr Modi on his part kept the fires burning by continuing to berate the Congress-led UPA on foreign soil.

The much-anticipated Bihar legislative elections represent a watershed moment because the BJP did remarkably well in the state in the Lok Sabha election and is unlikely to repeat its success, given the powerful opposition parties’ combination, which held an impressive rally, despite the turmoil over seat allotment to the Samajwadi Party and the country’s changed mood. If crowds at rallies are a measure of popular support, Mr Modi’s most recent exercise in Bihar fell short of expectations.

Mr Modi and the Sangh Parivar set much store by their muscular image and promoting their Hindutva agenda. There are obvious problems in fitting these objectives into a functioning (or sometimes disfunctioning) parliamentary democracy. It is for Mr Modi in his dual role of Prime Minister and a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh adherent to draw the red lines between promoting ideology and governing the country for the growth and welfare of all the people. The RSS top down structure and the BJP’s own tiered system of command are not helpful.

What is going for Mr Modi is that he is a fast learner and is pragmatic enough to discard what does not work. But he is not a free agent, imprisoned as he is in his own beliefs fed to him in his formative years, and the iron hand of his mentor, the RSS. The manner in which historical and research organisations are packed with unqualified RSS men and women is plain, although the government’s attempt to plant a BJP lightweight as head of the prestigious film institute at Pune went awry. The institute has been closed for months by agitating students as legends in the film industry decry the choice of a party hack to head it.

If the BJP does not do as well in Bihar as it expects to, it might give Mr Modi an opportunity to move away from his trodden path to try to build a consensus to take his legislative agenda forward. His contempt for the Congress method of doing things is undisguised and is often broadcast to the world. He is unlikely to change his views on the Congress and other opposition parties but as Prime Minister, he can try to be civil to them and take into account the fact that there are valid views other than his own and the Sangh Parivar’s in shaping the future.

In a sense, Mr Modi has reached a fork in his still early days as Prime Minister. The RSS is already taking stock of his performance and will count his government’s shortcomings against its own sets of values and priorities. In the other scale lies the future of the country.