Raj Thackeray is right, Anna is filling a BJP vacuum
Akshaya Mishra Jun 23, 2011
#BJP #ConnectTheDots #Raj Thackeray #sushma swaraj
After a bout of boisterous posturing over corruption and black money, the BJP is suddenly nowhere in the picture. It now appears, its intervention was specific to the case of Baba Ramdev only; neither the party nor its mother organisation, the RSS, was really keen on the bigger issue. Their withdrawal from the scene provided breathing space to the government and helped it formulate a clear strategy to handle Anna Hazare and the group of anti-corruption crusaders.
As the principal opposition, the BJP was expected to pounce on the opportunity created by Hazare and team and take the moral high ground by taking the attack to the embattled UPA. Ironically, no other opposition party has shown the inclination to seize the initiative to make a political statement.
Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and senior BJP leader L K Advani have a job on their hands if they want to resurrect the party in the national scene. Manvender Vashist/PTI
There’s a clear vacuum in the opposition space. It’s waiting to be occupied.
Unfortunately for the opposition parties, it is the civil society which has stepped in to fill in the vacuum. When people outside the political mainstream take the political centre stage, parties need to introspect.
Raj Thackeray, president of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, hit the nail on the head. “Common people are supporting activists like Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev because the opposition is inefficient, both at the Centre and the states,” he said on Thursday, while talking about the state of the BJP and the Shiv Sena in the context of the Gopinath Munde episode.
Munde, who had threatened to quit the BJP after being pushed to the margins in the state unit by party president Nitin Gadkari, hob-nobbed with the Congress before deciding to stay back in the party. Thackeray claimed the Congress refused to entertain Munde’s demand, which forced him to change his mind.
The Munde episode does not amount to much in terms of political significance but it reflects the poor state of affairs in the BJP, the party in waiting for the big national role in case the Congress-led UPA is voted out. The party is saddled with too many middle-level leaders, none of whom has shown the promise to shine on the national scene. The leaders are too busy settling personal scores among themselves—Sushma Swaraj vs Arun Jaitley, Narendra Modi vs Sushma Swaraj, Shivraj Singh Chauhan vs Uma Bharati, well it’s a long list—to focus on the party and its growth.
“Whatever is happening in the BJP is not good and should stop,” an exasperated RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told reporters some days ago. He made it clear that it was up to the BJP to tackle its problems. Nothing much has changed. Middle level leaders are busy building their loyalty base. Gadkari’s role in Munde’s case makes it evident.
It is clear by now that the party’s political future is bleak unless it comes out of the RSS shadows to build an identity of its own. But given the fact that it is impossible—the BJP is yet to develop a solid organisational structure of its own and has to depend on the huge RSS network for political survival —the party needs nothing less than a magic wand to revive its fortune.
So what we have in the end is a party without a focus and a game plan. The confusion has made itself conspicuous during Anna Hazre’s anti-corruption agitation.
What threatens to make the vacuum in the opposition space a long one is the absence of other parties to take over. The Left, the only party with a promise in terms of ideology, has managed to marginalise itself; the other parties in the frame are confined to the states.
This leaves the field wide open for the Congress, which despite minor troubles here and there, has managed to keep its house together. It is free to handle challenges like Anna Hazare the way it wants without bothering about an opposition backlash.
