On the campaign trail, Narendra Modi used technology as a force multiplier to get his image and message to every nook and computer in the country. After he was elected Prime Minister his team developed a hi-tech website on which people could easily connect to India’s Prime Sewak, as Modi calls himself. Now along with BJP president Amit Shah, Modi got the party to launch on November 1 a nationwide enrolment drive to rope in the proverbial ‘aam admi’ to be a member of the party.

Flagging off the effort, Modi became the “first member” to digitally enrol himself at a function organised at the party’s Delhi headquarters. To make it easy for people to enrol, the BJP website now has an online form which states, “The Bharatiya Janata Party is on a mission to turn around this country but things will not change without YOU. As a member of the BJP you will help us bring about a change. By becoming a member of the BJP you will get the opportunity to participate in local and national events. Be the change you want to see. Join the BJP.”

Modi and Shah at the BJP’s nationwide enrolment drive on November 1. Tribune photo

Enrolment drives are now being launched in shopping malls, vegetable markets, college campuses, industrial hubs and village centres. The party currently has a membership of 3.5 crore. It hopes to add 10 crore new members by the end of March next year and thereby become the country’s single largest cadre-based party. Urging his party men to spread the net far and wide, Modi said, “The party must reflect the diversity of the country and workers must reach every nook and corner of the country to register at least one BJP member in every village.” As of yesterday, party sources claimed that already 41 lakh people had enrolled.

While the membership drive has got off to a cracking start, ever since its massive victory in the General Election, the BJP, particularly Modi, see it is as an opportune time for the party to permanently displace the Congress as the only truly pan-national political entity. The BJP is no more willing to be a junior partner in any poll alliance. Modi and Shah’s high-risk gamble by dumping its allies in the recent Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections and fighting the election on its own steam has paid off handsomely.

The new strategy is also being played out in Jammu and Kashmir, where the BJP has launched ‘Mission 44’ to win a majority of the 87 seats up for grabs in the upcoming assembly polls. This is again audacious because the highest number of seats it has got in the state in previous assembly elections is 11. But Modi senses that Jammu and Ladakh may back him fully and if the party is able to win a few seats in the Valley, he is hoping to make history in this frontline state.

In Punjab, this new-found confidence is showing in the growing assertiveness of the state BJP and talk of it breaking off its alliance with the ruling SAD. The BJP’s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangha, has stepped up its activities in Punjab and is also scouting for prominent Sikh leaders to join the party. In the communally sensitive Punjab and J & K, the BJP realises that anointing a Hindu as Chief Minister may not be politically wise. So the game-plan is to be like the Congress and build acceptance across both caste and religious spectrums.

With the Congress still in coma after its massive defeat in the national as well as recent state elections, Modi is moving quickly to permanently occupy the political vacuum left in its wake. While his quest to make the BJP an inclusive party is welcome, he has to be careful of the pitfalls ahead. Already there are murmurs in his party that the BJP is developing the Congress’ high-command culture with Modi being seen as nominating chief ministers of his choice in Maharashtra and Haryana.

Also while Modi called for a 10-year moratorium on communal and caste issues in his impressive Independence Day address he has so far not silenced the extreme elements in his own party who have spewed venom and tried to polarise communities at every opportunity they have got. Perhaps the Prime Minister feels it is too early to come down strongly on the hardliners in his party till he fully consolidates his hold on the government and the party, and the development programmes he has launched begin to show results.

However, if Modi wants the BJP to occupy the space that the Congress had straddled since Independence, he has not only to seen as a problem solver but he has to ensure that his party becomes a nationally unifying force committed to strengthening the founding principles that our great nation was built on.

raj@tribuneindia.com