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NATION
there appears to be an uncanny coincidence with the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and the month of December. In its first year in office in 2004, a tidal wave shook the shores of Southern India and in its last year in office, a political tsunami struck in the North, with an epicentre in Delhi, sending shockwaves across the country.
The startling electoral debut by the nascent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rattled entrenched political parties, forcing each one of them to put their ear to the ground and hear voices of the people they claim to represent. Will the AAP, that is promising to replicate its Delhi experiment elsewhere in the country during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, be able pull it off? These are early days yet to arrive at any definite conclusion but certainly AAP has shown the its potential to complicate cold calculations by politicians and leaders of different persuasions. Over the past few months, a mahaul (atmosphere) is being sought to be created by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by launching an aggressive campaign led by its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
Showcasing his work as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is cruising in his mission to dethrone the coalition government at the Centre headed by the Congress for the last 10 years and install the BJP, thus ending its decade in the Opposition. In the process, Modi is not showing any eagerness, at least in public, of having any alliance. As of now the BJP is left with just two partners — Shiv Sena and Shiromani Akali Dal — down from the 23-party coalition that Atal Bihari Vajpayee headed between 1999 and 2004. Does the BJP under Modi need allies? Currently, the BJP is a party that is restricted to the Hindi-speaking belt in the northern and western parts of India with little or no presence elsewhere. The party’s only window in the South was shut after the former BJP strongman BS Yeddyurappa moved away in Karnataka to float a separate party. Much will depend, on his decision to return to team up with the BJP. The other factor for the BJP is that the Congress, too, has suffered both in terms of loss of alliance partners and a perception that its government at the Centre having become struck with “policy paralysis”.
Besides battling anti-incumbency, the Congress appears to have fallen out of favour with the middle-class that voted Manmohan Singh government back in 2009, and out-of-sync with an aspirational young India.
To compound the woes of the Congress, its vice-president Rahul Gandhi still appears to be reluctant to counter the high-octane campaign unleashed by the BJP even as Congress president Sonia Gandhi, his mother and the chief architect of UPA-1 and II, is eager to pass on the baton. Congress strategists are avoiding being sucked into the vortex of American model Modi versus Rahul battle sticking to a swadeshi classical contest between parties. The year saw the emergence of regional satraps both in the Congress and the BJP, with the backward caste leader Sidharamiah leading the Congress to power in Karnataka. while Vasundhara Raje made a forceful comeback in Rajasthan with a thumping majority for the BJP, which can now boast of having two other leaders in its camp who have recorded a hat-trick of wins in state elections — the low-profile Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh and the genial Raman Singh in neighbouring Chhattisgarh. As results across various states, both in the last Lok Sabha and to the state Assemblies show, a great deal of political space is also occupied by other parties, which do not subscribe to the policies of either the Congress or the BJP, and strong regional parties. It is here that the talk of a possible Third Front comes in. Contours of this will emerge after the 2014 General Election. When the Lok Sabha passed the landmark Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill, 2013, by consensus, it was a ‘historic and landmark’ legislation that marked an end to the long struggle waged by Gandhian Anna Hazare. In the clamour to claim credit for its passage, it was the Leader of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, who said the old man who had fasted for the Lokpal Bill, deserved the full credit for it. This Bill paved the way to establish an ombudsman to fight corruption in public offices and ensure accountability on the part of public officials, including the Prime Minister, but with safeguards.
Modi’s success mantra
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Aam aadmi plays party pooper 
