The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

POLITICS
Face is the ace
The Gujarat and Himachal Assembly election results have shown beyond doubt that to have a definite face to lead a poll campaign is a must. As the country looks to general elections in 2014, Modi has emerged a strong contender from the BJP; will Rahul be the Congress’ face?
By Anita Katyal

pick of the pack: While the Gujarat election was Narendra Modi all the way, Virbhadra Singh — handed charge of the Congress campaign in Himachal at the last moment — showed what a well-received regional leader could do for the party.

When Congress president Sonia Gandhi was asked to name the party’s prime-ministerial candidate in the run-up to the 2009 Lok Sabha poll, she had held up a copy of its election manifesto, placed her hand on her own image, and pointed to Manmohan Singh’s accompanying photograph.

This was perhaps the first time that the Congress had made such an emphatic declaration about its future Prime Minister before heading into an election instead of trotting out the standard one-liner, “This matter will be decided by the legislature party after the elections.”

The Congress strategy paid off. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s clean and pro-reforms image endeared him to the urban middle-class voter, a traditional BJP supporter, and powered the second consecutive victory for the Congress at the Centre. This election demonstrated that in addition to the party ideology, a strong support base and an individual candidate’s credentials, it is equally critical to showcase a strong, credible leader. It no longer pays to run a faceless campaign.

And what is true at the national level also applies to the states. The Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal Assembly polls had reaffirmed the need for projecting a leader who is rooted in the state and articulates the aspirations of the region’s populace. Similarly, the results of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh polls also underlined the importance of powerful, charismatic regional leaders. If the Gujarat election was led by the one-man army comprising Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress campaign in Himachal Pradesh was headed by the state’s veteran mass leader Virbhadra Singh.

Off with the mask: Supporters of Narendra Modi say it is now hard to put him down as a candidate for the Prime Minister’s post. In the Congress rank and file, they are sure Rahul Gandhi is their face for the 2014 general elections, but is the party general secretary up to it remains a question. pti

“If there is one lesson we have learnt from these elections is the need to project a strong state leader... not state leadership, but a face,” remarked a senior UPA minister, adding that political parties can no longer be coy on this front. Clearly, regional satraps are the need of the day.

The Congress particularly needs to ponder seriously on this issue when the party top brass meets in Jaipur next month for a two-day “chintan shivir”, or brainstorming session, to draw up the contours of its strategy for the coming Assembly polls, which will, in turn, lead into the 2014 general elections. With the Congress having high stakes in the next year’s polls in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi, the party will necessarily have to prop up effective leaders there, but the ongoing factional battles in the state units could prove to be a hindrance.

The Congress has generally shied away from promoting strong independent state leaders as the party’s deeply-entrenched sycophantic culture demands that these leaders should be the party high command’s nominees and should depend on it for survival. There have been exceptions like the hugely-popular late Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Rajasekhara Reddy, who successfully won two successive terms for the Congress because he was declared the party’s face in the elections.

In contrast to the Congress, the BJP has made a conscious effort in this direction. Their Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh chief ministers, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh, were virtually non-entities when they were sent to head their respective states but they proved able and popular administrators and ensured a second term for the saffron party. Modi might be grabbing eyeballs and headlines but the BJP’s other chief ministers have also been equally successful.

Gujarat debacle

A host of reasons have been cited for the Congress party’s sixth consecutive defeat in Gujarat, although it did make a sincere effort to run a different campaign in the state. It was deliberately kept low-key, focused on local issues, exposed Modi’s claims on the state’s social indicators and avoided any reference to the 2002 riots to avoid polarisation. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi put in a token appearance, addressing only a handful of meetings, in an effort to keep the focus on state leaders.

However, nothing worked. The biggest chink in the Congress armour was its inability to project a leader who could provide even a semblance of a challenge to the fiery and aggressive Narendra Modi. The party’s undoing has been its failure to promote young leaders in the states and Gujarat has been no exception. It is a telling comment on the state of the Gujarat Congress organisation that both its legislature party leader Shaktisinh Gohil and the Pradesh Committee president Arjun Modvadia were defeated in these elections. Ironically, the Congress was depending on these two leaders to lead the party campaign.

With these faces at the helm, the Gujarat election was virtually a no-contest. Modi’s larger-than-life persona dominated the political landscape as he successfully tapped into the aspirations of the growing urban middle class by marketing himself as an authoritative figure and a doer who has provided a corruption-free government and delivers on his promises. Always a step ahead of his adversaries, his appeal has been further enhanced because of his persistent emphasis on Gujarati pride while his commitment to Hindutva is a given. Godhra and the anti-Muslims riots that followed in 2002 were not an election issue this time but Modi’s emergence as the face of the Hindu political identity is so widely accepted and internalised by the people of Gujarat that he did not feel the need to persist with this issue.

Though deeply embedded in the electorate’s subconscious, Modi occasionally jogged their memory to draw attention to this aspect of his personality. Why else would he have suddenly referred to Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel as Ahmed Mian or raised the Sir Creek issue. For all his efforts to present a moderate face, Modi’s brand of politics necessarily needs a hate figure and in his case, it is the Muslims.

Cong man in the hills

If Modi put the BJP on top by winning Gujarat for a third consecutive term, the Congress won a consolation prize by bagging the hill state of Himachal Pradesh. Like Gujarat, the Congress ran a highly localised election campaign, focusing primarily on the acts of omission and commission by the BJP government headed by Prem Kumar Dhumal. The latter sought to deflect attention from the rebellion within his ranks and his administration’s deficiencies by highlighting the corruption charges against the UPA government at the Centre and its policies like the cap on LPG cylinders and price rise. These issues did not cut much ice with the electorate while the move to focus on the UPA’s scams boomeranged when BJP president Nitin Gadkari faced similar corruption charges in connection with his Nagpur-based Purti group of industries.

While the Congress will not admit to it publicly, its leaders privately acknowledge that the reason their campaign failed in Gujarat but succeeded in Himachal Pradesh was also because the party had a face to lead it in the hill state. After marginalising him for the past several years, the Congress leadership decided to appoint its former Union Minister, five-time Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, as the state party unit president at the last moment, but not before he literally threatened a show of strength and signalled his desire to switch sides to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The move paid off as there is no denying that the senior leader’s mass following helped the Congress wrest the state back from the ruling BJP.

Even as the BJP and the Congress are congratulating themselves for their respective wins in Gujarat and Himahcal Pradesh, the parties have to gear up for the next big electoral challenge that awaits them. But the BJP has to first sort out its leadership problem which has already set off a major internal upheaval. It promises to get far worse in the coming days as the three-term winner in Gujarat, Narendra Modi, is impatient to make a splash on the national scene. Modi made his prime-ministerial ambitions quite evident during the campaign when he highlighted the UPA government’s failures and trained his guns on Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. This was again reflected in his victory speech when Modi deliberately chose to speak in Hindi in a clear attempt to reach out to an audience beyond his state as he triumphantly declared that his victory was for everybody from Assam to Kanyakumari who desired development.

Fuel of ambition

Predictably, Modi’s burning ambition has resulted in considerable unease within the party’s top echelons as many of the senior Delhi leaders also fancy their chances as the party’s prime-ministerial candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. If the celebrations at the Ahmedabad and central party offices on the day of the results were any indication, the rank and file has already started clamouring for Modi’s move to Delhi. The cadres maintain that Modi’s projection as the BJP’s next prime-ministerial candidate is beyond question, but the Gujarat strongman will first have to clear three hurdles — the BJP, RSS and the NDA.

While the BJP’s other prime-ministerial aspirants will resist the move to project Modi, there are genuine misgivings about the Gujarat Chief Minister’s autocratic style of functioning. Showing scant regard for the party, Modi has literally decimated party structures in the state. Similarly, the RSS is also uncomfortable with the Gujarat leader’s tendency to strike out on his own as the Sangh does not want to lose control over the BJP.

Modi’s biggest challenge is to find acceptability with the NDA allies. The BJP’s key partner, Janata Dal (U) leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, has declared he will not accept Modi as the NDA’s prime-ministerial candidate while potential partner Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee too may be driven away. Both leaders have sizeable Muslim populations in their states and cannot afford to be seen in Modi’s company because of his communal taint.

Overdoing it

Modi may also be stopped in his tracks because of the image that he has created of himself as a tough-talking, no-nonsense leader in order to enhance his appeal to his constituency in Gujarat. However, this may well prove to be his undoing for if he is to shift to the national platform, Modi will have to reinvent himself as a team player and a consensus builder. His inability to work with others will also make it difficult for the BJP to hold on to its allies and seek out more partners, which is imperative if it wants a shot at forming the next government as the saffron party cannot hope to come to power on its own. Trapped in his own image, Modi will alienate his core constituency if he attempts to change himself. On the other hand, if he fails to display greater flexibility, his strength in Gujarat will prove to be weakness outside the state.

Modi supporters are quick to point out that the Gujarat leader will be hard to put down as he has acquired a pan-Indian fan following. While there is no evidence to suggest as much, the Himachal Pradesh election result would indicate that Modi has no impact outside his state. The Gujarat Chief Minister had campaigned in the hill state but the BJP lost there. Conversely, Modi did not campaign in Punjab but the Akali-BJP alliance beat back anti-incumbency and won a second consecutive term.

One on one

Unlike the BJP, there is no leadership dispute in the Congress where the line of succession is very clear. While there is no doubt that the Nehru-Gandhi scion is the party’s prime-ministerial candidate, what is not clear to the nervous Congress rank and file is whether Rahul Gandhi is up to it as he has, so far, not shown any inclination towards taking up this challenge. The young Congress general secretary has now decided to shoulder the responsibility of leading the party in the next general elections and is already working on an electoral strategy.

However, the Congress will face a huge challenge if the 2014 poll is converted into a presidential-style contest between Modi and Rahul. Both leaders have mass appeal within their respective parties, but are yet to prove themselves on the national stage, though Modi has a clear edge as he has won three consecutive Assembly polls, having acquired the reputation of a master strategist, charismatic orator and an efficient administrator.