Why the Bharatiya Janata Party needs Modi
Citizens from five states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana cast their vote lately to choose their Vidhan Sabha members. With the results out on Tuesday, the trends gave a clear winner in Mizoram, Telangana and Chhattisgarh, but a close call in Rajasthan. It was however, Madhya Pradesh that kept everyone on the edge of their seats. K Chandrasekhar Rao won a clean victory in the youngest state of Telangana, and Mizoram voted for its Mizo National Front.
It is official, the ruling national Bharatiya Janata Party needs Narendra Modi to clinch in even the smallest of victory. Madhya Pradesh, Chhattishgarh and Rajasthan are traditional BJP strongholds with large agrarian electorates. However, with Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan now handed over to the Congress, and Madhya still hanging loose and inching closer towards the foot-in-mouth Rahul Gandhi's party, the truth is Modi's BJP has suffered a massive political blow. Now it is left to see how the party springs back in 2019's Lok Sabha elections. BJP's shock defeat came in Chhattisgarh, where the Congress has far outstripped the BJP in the Maoist-hit state.
While the Modi party did get a wake-up call, it is the Congress that seems to have truly won against their own will, failing to capitalise on anti-incumbency except in Chhattisgarh. The BJP put up a real fight in MP and Rajasthan. In the former state, BJP was battling a three-term anti-incumbency, while in Rajasthan, it was fighting against the 30 year old trend of voting out the government in assembly elections. The BJP is still in the picture in Madhya Pradesh if the state gets a hung assembly.
However, latest trend from the counting of votes depicts that BJP did better for an incumbent party than what the Congress did as a challenger. While the throne belongs to Gandhi, the people's hearts belong to BJP. Apart from Chhattisgarh, the Congress seems to have failed to cash in on anti-incumbency in any of the states. While the BJP governments of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had to fight huge anti-incumbency both against the government and the sitting MLAs.
While on one one hand it bodes true that BJP needs Modi to breathe, another theory is Modi's honeymoon period with Indian voters has come to an end. Ever since his massive, yet brutal victory in Uttar Pradesh last year, the results of demonetisation and the mess that was the implementation of GST, people's confidence in him seems to have shaken. The worst was when he had to slog in his own region- Gujarat, for the party to win the state. His presence in MP and Chhattisgarh campaigning was miniscule at best, a brave move giving chief ministers all the focus. Rajasthan's Vasundhara Raje was not seen as being on the same page as the BJP’s national leadership, including Modi and party president Amit Shah. Her personal traits are believed to be one of the main reasons behind the BJP’s defeat. Her image of behaving like a queen and being inaccessible seemingly didn't go along well with the voters.
While there is no certainty on how much the election results will influence the next Lok Sabha elections, it seems to be certain that Modi has a strong challenger in the INC. He also needs to work on his presence in election campaigns next year, because after all, Modi tikta hai toh Bhajap bikta hai.
Creating a fictional global order
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was recently quoted as saying that America would be moving ahead with its grand plan for an emergent global order based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law and other such items from his country’s political confectionary. Tellingly, Russia, long a western bête noire was to be excluded from this arrangement, with Chine, too, outside the pale. China, once a favoured strategic partner against Moscow (and India) during the halcyon Nixon-Kissinger era, is now viewed through a glass, darkly. Few, if any, of the globe’s chattering classes are likely to taken in by this gaseous projection of US authority. Many a banana republic next door has been sustained by Washington’s life support systems reserved for dependencies. Overt and covert indulgence of Gulf sheikhdoms and the medievalist monstrosity of Saudi Arabia and the self-enriching Marcos dynasty in the Philippines, coupled with the generous bounty accorded over decades to the Pakistan military, and thence to its jihadi operatives, is a dismal tale. The Pompeo subtext reveals the intent to use regime change near and far as a continuing practice of US foreign policy. He should understand that his country’s size and weaponry alone cannot be the criteria of American strength; otherwise the most feared pre-historic reptiles and mammals would defy extinction and still be stalking and terrorizing the Earth’s benign creatures.
Nothing reflects the hallowed American sanctities than the vaporous eulogies of the late President George H.W Bush and his long public service to his country’s myriad causes, among which was a feisty, unbowed Iran. Hence the shooting down of an Iranian passenger aircraft with the loss of 290 lives on board, including 66 children, elicited flared nostrils and high octane rhetoric of defiance that he, as President of the United States, would never censure his country’s actions since its apostolic sacrament was the pursuit of freedom and democracy. As the pursuit of such happiness rigorously excluded the continent’s native Indians (now near to extinction) and African slaves for almost a century, the senior Bush’s vision statement was blighted by a severe recession of the truth. The mainstream US media have buried their country’s torture chambers in Guantanamo, Iraq et al.
The ZTrump administration’s is similarly gung-ho. Its tariff war with China no sooner put on hold than followed the warrant for arrest of the Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of the Chinese flagship high-tech telecommunications and smartphone company Huawei. Held in Canada,she has applied for bail at a Vancouver court and is also contesting the legality of the extradition order to the US. Meng Wanzhou’s alleged felony is believed to be covert financial transactions with Iran. The Chinese government in high dudgeon has naturally demanded an explanation. Whither US-China relations?
Finally, President Trump’s administration has given Russia 60-day notice to cease production of an intermediate range ballistic missile or face the consequences. The President’s threat that the US had nuclear weapon technologies beyond the reach of any other nation is self-defeating and dangerously hallucinatory. This is what propelled the Truman administration to manufacture and use the first atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The president, his, close advisers and the CIA predicated their policy on the calculation that it would take the ‘backward’ Russians many decades before had anything remotely comparable. Moscow’s bomb was tested within four years, signalling the start of the ruinous arms race. President Putin responded to the latest US threat laconically. Any US withdrawal from nuclear arms limitation treaties, said his military chief, would meet with an appropriate Russian response. A new arms race looms menacingly over humanity. Crusades require crusaders: Dr Strangelove is alive and well in the White House.
