It’s been a great year for the Bharatiya Janata Party electorally. They started off by winning the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections for the second time in a row along with three other states of Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. Then, just months later, they managed to take away from their rivals the Samajwadi Party, their Muslim dominated strongholds of Azamgarh and Rampur. They also went on to get back into power in Maharashtra, albeit by successfully orchestrating a split in their former ally, the Shiv Sena.
Now, you could agree with their critics who say that the BJP is forever in election mode and they use their resources to bankroll their ambition for power. But is there more to it than just resources and flexing muscles? In this episode, I try to answer a question that pops up after every time the BJP pulls off a win- What’s behind the rise of the BJP? How did they go from launching in 1980 to ruling not just the centre, but 19 out of 28 states.
STRATEGY NUMBER 1- TENACITY
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with party workers in May this year, he had just one lesson for them- to never be complacent. “As the party has governments in 18 states, it has more than 400 MPs and 1,300 MLAs, one might tend to think it’s enough. But that should not be the case … We should not be complacent as our founding fathers have taught us to continue working hard for the people and their welfare,” he said.
It’s like one of those adages you hear a lot when you cover the BJP as a journalist- how they throw all their weight behind every election-nothing is too small for them, even a small corporation election can become a bit of a prestige battle, where they send in heavy duty leaders from Delhi.
But, is this something that started just with the Narendra Modi led BJP or was this always in the party’s DNA? You can find the answers in conversations with their party workers, their supporters and of course, in their leadership.
In fact, key strategist and minister Bhupendra Yadav has written a book called Rise of the BJP, that he has co-authored with economist Ila Patnaik. As I read through its pages tracking the rise of the party since independence, it was fascinating to see what they acknowledge as their key to success.
“The BJP treats every seat, every election with the same respect because every voter matters whether it is UP or Bengal. We want to win. we want to serve. In BJP power is the means to service,” is the way, Yadav puts their dogged target-setting. I always think of this great anecdote which a BJP insider told me about their micro-donation campaign. It’s a scheme the party introduced as part of going back to their Sangh roots and giving a modest donation which could be very small like 5 rupees.
Like all their campaigns, it was decided that everybody in the party, however senior or junior, must contribute and must urge others to do so.. Because the BJP has such large numbers of 18 crore party workers, everyone thought that they’d get in lots of money but two months down the line, they hadn’t even collected 1 crore rupees. The BJP leader told me that the reason wasn’t because of lack of enthusiasm but because the party workers were given so many tasks and so many commands, they just sometimes got frazzled and were sometimes just unable to keep up with the tough bosses
STRATEGY NUMBER 3- IDENTIFYING & LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
That brings me to strategy number 3 in ‘operation rise of the BJP’ — learn from your mistakes and quickly rectify them. Unlike the Congress, which has a fuzzy sense of the mistakes that lead to losses, the BJP is quick to zero in on them soon after a defeat. In his book, Bhupendra Yadav gives us an insight into what was really happening inside the BJP camp when they had the shock defeat of the Vajpayee government in 2004. It was the first time they had enjoyed a full term of power and apparently it went to their head.
They thought they’d just won state elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the media opinion polls were solidly for them and so they brought the general elections forward. Vajpayee’s minister and campaign strategist Pramod Mahajan told everyone that `India was shining” in a glitzy ad campaign but not everyone agreed, especially rural voters. So, BJP lost along with all their senior leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, Ram Naik, Jagmohan, Shahnawaz Husain, Vijay Goyal and many others. And the reasons identified were lack of communication,lack of coalitions in Assam, Haryana and poor management of other coalitions.
The party also acknowledged that when they were in government, they had almost ignored the party and the organisation. There was so much flux, they had 4 party presidents in just 6 years. “The BJP did not ignore the organisation. The system in the BJP is such that it is not possible. My point in the book, “The Rise of the BJP”, is that a lot of organisation people moved into government and the organization in the government could not find the right rhythm of working in tandem. So, the message of the government could not reach as effectively as it should have,” said Yadav.
Problem identified, what’s the fix? The new leadership that came in 2013-14 led by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were like a twin engine. While PM Modi led the government, Amit Shah led the party and made sure that party’s workers kept spreading the government’s work. “We ensure that when the government implements a scheme, the organisational engines of the party take the message down to the masses, collect feedback and take action on the basis of the feedback. I mean the Pradham Mantri himself, the central ministers, state chief ministers, party senior leaders, everyone interacts with the beneficiaries of the scheme. We don’t just ask, we also listen, whenever we find that there is some problem in implementation, we fix it.
BJP ministers and party workers and party functionaries are sent on regular tour programs that require them to spend time with people. Senior leaders visit far flung areas, inhabited by historically marginalised communities and interact with them. We try to assess if our schemes are working on the ground or not. If you look at our digital push, apps like the NAMO app have opened a channel for people to send ideas and feedback for the Prime Minister himself on schemes and plans. This is not just tokenism, these feedbacks are scanned and acted upon,” he added.
STRATEGY NUMBER 4- BOOTH & VOTER MANAGEMENT
You’ve got your ideology, you’ve got your team and you’ve also spread the word, now all you have to wait for is hope that it’s enough for voters to vote you back in? That’s leaving too much to chance, as far as the BJP is concerned. They have a unique system of booth management-for every 30 voters or so, there is a manager appointed by the party whose only job is to get them into the polling station.
“Definitely major credit for it goes to then BJP President and now our honourable home minister Amit Shah ji. When he took over as the president, he said BJP should not take any election lightly. He asked the party cadre to focus on the bloc and said that if we win the block, we win the election. Every office allows scope to make a difference to human life. That’s the reason why BJP is more focused at the lowest level of booth, that’s called a panna pramukh,” said Yadav.
This level of planning is something other parties are only just waking up to. For instance, the block level management is something the Congress is trying to do in Telangana but now the BJP has a 8-year lead.
There is also a desire to tap into new groups. For instance, `Pareeksha pe charcha’, the Prime Minister’s event where he speaks to board exam students, ostensibly has nothing political about it However, in his book, Bhupendra Yadav says that this was the party’s way of connecting with families who would have otherwise not cared about politics. Also, a way for the Prime Minister to influence those who were about to turn 18 and be first time voters.
STRATEGY NUMBER 5- MODI MAGIC
But all the strategies I listed are very small compared to their main strategy which is betting on Narendra Modi. Every party worker, every leader, knows he’s their trump card and he seems to have a teflon quality to bounce back from setbacks.
For example, the demonetisation programme in 2016 wasn’t a success, but he won the 2017 UP elections. More recently, the farm reform laws caused a year long protest and the government had to take them back and apologise for it, but despite all of that and less than 5 months later, they won’t Uttar Pradesh, they won Uttarakhand, both while bucking trends.
There’s this very telling video I saw recently of the Prime Minister interacting with workers who built the central vista. When he asks them what they thought of his visit, they said that it was like Lord Ram visiting. And that’s where it all stands, till voters and BJP supporters see Modi as God like, the party is likely to keep winning elections. Especially, since the Opposition has failed to come up with a challenging narrative to counter the BJP’s.
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