Opinion - Leader Page Articles

The humbug called Gujarat model statecraft

Just a day after the Bharatiya Janata Party tried its best to convince the country that it was ready under the refurbished leadership of Lal Krishna Advani to help us find our way to some kind of institutional sanity out of our over-heated political partisanship, it organised a “march” to the Nirvachan Sadan, pressuring the Chief Election Commissioner, N. Gopalaswami, to see merit in its frivolously partisan petition against Election Commissioner Navin Chawla. For a party that would like the middle classes to believe that it is re-committing itself to the notions of good governance, rescuing our institutions from personal agendas, this blatant attempt to politicise a constitutional office was hardly calculated to reassure the nation that the BJP is any wiser after its six years of non-performance in office and after four years of irresponsible opposition to the United Progressive Alliance government. Pettiness and small-mindedness are not exactly the qualities that ensure forward-looking governance.

Contrast this cocksure anti-Chawla pettiness with the confusion over the so-called “Gujarat model” at the party’s just-concluded national council. Ever since the BJP registered a famous victory in Gujarat in December 2007, the party — or at least a section of its leadership — has given the impression that Narendra Modi has invented the winning formula which can be and should be replicated outside Gujarat. A large number of retired (and frustrated) bureaucrats and “security experts” have expressed the view that Mr. Modi is the idea whose time has come. And, in his opening remarks at the national executive last Sunday before the national council, the party president, Rajnath Singh, did manage to create the impression that he was asking the BJP’s other Chief Ministers to emulate Mr. Modi’s formula for beating the anti-incumbency syndrome.

It was no coincidence that the day the BJP national council began its deliberations the Gujarat government chose to put in full-page paid advertisements in newspapers, extolling the “Gujarat model,” based on three claims: a strong, honest and efficient leadership; transparent governance that nurtures innovations; and a vision to make development a people’s movement. It was Mr. Modi’s calling card. With many photographs of the Chief Minister adorning the page, there was no mistaking that the focus was on “strong leadership’s stupendous achievements.” And, again, it was no coincidence that no national iconic leaders — Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani or Rajnath Singh — found a mention in the full-page advertisement. The “strong leader” does not like to share his space with other leaders, however tall.

It was also no coincidence that there was no particularly marked enthusiasm for the “Gujarat model” in the two neighbouring States of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, both ruled by the BJP, with comparatively young and clean Chief Ministers, enjoying comfortable legislative majorities. If these two Chief Ministers were to commission similar full-page advertisements, any reasonably competent public relations outfit would be able to coin equally comforting phrases and claims made in the “Gujarat model.” What these two Chief Ministers may not be able — and even may not like — to assert is the claim to “strong leadership,” with all its not-so-comforting connotations. Minus this “strong leadership” narrative, the claims of “performance” and “achievements” in the Modi model are so Gujarat-centric that no serious student or practitioner of governance, in and out of the BJP, would be taken in.

Nor can the BJP establishment be entirely pleased with the exclusive focus in the “Gujarat model” on an individual, however “strong,” to the total exclusion of the party’s organisational robust profile. What the 2007 Gujarat battle has demonstrated is how difficult it is to win electoral contests without strong organisational sinews; those Congress candidates who did manage to match the BJP’s organisational preparedness had no difficulty in defying the “Modi wave.” It is because of this organisational edge that the BJP has been winning in Gujarat since 1989, much before Mr. Modi metamorphosed into a “strong leader.”

Perhaps it was no surprise that the BJP’s national council did not allow itself to be overwhelmed by the specious claims made in the name of the Gujarat model. Apart from the simple fact that such a romantic engagement would have necessarily distracted from the L.K. Advani-the-next-Prime-Minister-tableau, as also from the Rajnath Singh-the-party-president-illusion, any exaggerated serenading of the “strong leader” from Gujarat would have prompted serious misgiving among the National Democratic Alliance partners, without whose support and parliamentary numbers the BJP cannot possibly hope to make a comeback to the Delhi throne. And the misgivings, well-pronounced in private, converge on the anti-minorities appeal in the “Gujarat model.”

However, there is no mistaking that the “strong leader” in the Gujarat model was able to weave a narrative that re-kindled the fears and prejudices of the majority of voters on the so-called “security” issues. This is a code word for minority-bashing. He also showed a remarkable virtuosity in manipulating the media discourse to his advantage; especially he displayed a cunning shrewdness in enlisting the presumed secular faces of the national media, print and electronic, in giving respectability to his subtle-messaging.

After the BJP’s national council, it is not yet clear whether or not the internal debate on the “Gujarat model” is over. Crudely put, the BJP leaders too see through the claims of the Gujarat model and have refused to take a call on whether to settle for the crude bottom-line of Mr. Modi’s appeal. The temptation is strong. After all, a cultivated anti-minority animosity is ingrained in the party’s ideological DNA.

Nor can there be any doubt about a nation-wide disquiet on the internal security front. This disquiet emanates mostly on account of the embarrassingly lacklustre leadership at the Union Home Ministry, as also on account of a perception that the Manmohan Singh government’s alliance politics will not help meet the challenge of the professional terrorist. Given this unease, the question that becomes tempting for the BJP is: why not plump for the “strong man” formulation? Given its penchant for small-time cleverness, the BJP can be expected to repackage the anti-minority appeal as an alternative to the “weak” UPA.

Incontestably the country does yearn for strong, coherent and purposeful governance, an expectation that the UPA regime has belied. The Prime Minister and the rest of the Congress leadership have allowed the allies and supporting parties to reduce the national government to a cluster of ill-advised compromises and indefensible accommodations. Yet it would require a tremendous leap of faith to convince the country that the BJP leaders will somehow be able to cut through the unhealthy demands of unhelpful allies; having danced variously in the past to the discordant tunes of a Chandrababu Naidu, a Bal Thackeray, or a Jayalalithaa, the BJP leadership may find that its self-belief is not widely shared beyond the party faithfuls.

An objective need for a strong leadership notwithstanding, the country in its collective wisdom has come to appreciate that the Gujarat model of permanent exclusion of the minorities is a recipe for long-term trouble. In fact, the 2004 vote was a rejection of the BJP solution of an unending civil war, modelled on George W. Bush’s agenda. The country has repeatedly rejected the linkage — which is implicit in the Gujarat model — among Indian Muslims, Islam, Pakistan and terror.

What the country needs is a leadership that will help political parties and professional politicians to break out of our current debilitating partisanship. Every national or regional leader can be faulted on count of having a moral deficit and for lacking a strategic appetite. An unhealthy pre-occupation with winning the next electoral battle in this or that State keeps the so-called national leaders permanently locked in a state of compromise, timidity and accommodation. No leader is able to invoke our collective energies and nicer impulses; every leader is content to keep us a prisoner of our own negativities. And the Gujarat model is premised on the consolidation of our baser instincts. It is about time the BJP understood the humbug of the so-called Gujarat model.

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