What Next for the BJP? (Part 6)
by Rajesh Jain and Amit Malviya
Organisation: Efficient and National
With clarity of Ideology and a decisive Leader in place, half the battle will have been won for the BJP. The next step has to be start rebuilding the party organisation based on merit and morality. It also needs to expand its footprint nationally, especially in the four states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and West Bengal.
If there are three values that need to permeate the organisation, they are these:
- Integrity: there must be no compromise on honesty
- Courage: so one can make bold decisions without fear
- Nation First: this is easier said than done
There needs to be a radically different outlook to rebuilding the organisation, because the current system is broken.
A fundamental rethink needs to be done on how political parties fight elections. Let us first understand what the issues are, and then we can discuss solutions. There are three key problems that afflict political parties as they go into the elections:
- Selection of Candidates: It seems silly but parties just cannot seem to be able to get good enough candidates to fight in most constituencies! So, they are either transplanted from other areas or taken from the opposition. In some cases, there is so much legacy that people well past retirement age continue to fight. (A related issue even for sitting MPs is that most haven’t done any real work at the constituency level and so face a tough time getting re-elected.)
- Outreach to Voters: This comes down to actual communications and interaction with voters. To start with, a “3D map” of the constituency needs to created (location, profile, contact information) along with a feedback system to initiate and continue the conversation with the constituents. There is a message that needs to be communicated. Everyone seems to wake up only towards election time. What if this was not the case? What if this was a continuous engagement process? Parties and voters would both benefit.
Of course, there are various other factors which affect a candidate’s prospects - the opposition, caste/community issues, national perceptions (”waves”), etc. What is increasingly clear is that Indians can reward good governance least at the state level as has been seen in recent state elections. So, development can trump caste equations - at least in an increasingly larger part of India.
In a nutshell, in urbanising India, a combination of a good candidate affiliated with the right party with a deep outreach programme to voters, and complemented by adequate funding and continuing engagement through the years can create a foundation for victory. A win will not be guaranteed of course, but without these factors, one has to start relying on all kinds of other things (vote cutting candidates, caste calculations, etc.)
Tomorrow: Organisation (continued)
Comments
13 Responses to “What Next for the BJP? (Part 6)”
Dear Friends,
Before we talk of selection of candidates we should talk of people for booth maagement. The BJP is unable to contest in Tamilnadu as it does not have the cadre for manning booths. In Tamilnadu all that matters is money and muscle power. All this decent talk is not going to take us anywhere. Brahmins cannot emerge as mass leaders. It is shocking that people like Illa Ganesan are not takling responsibilty and resigning form their posts. The BJP needs to provide space to dalit leaders and backward caste leaders and stop being looked at as an uppercaste party.
People like Rajnath Singh have to go and he has emerged as the single biggest hurdle in the revival of the BJP.Old leaders cannot inspire the youth to join the BJP and strengthen it at the grassroot level. Yaswant Sinha and Jaswant Singh who are leaders with no base should remain silent.
Leaders have to be elected democraticaly and not nominated by some commitee. Lastly and most importantly the RSS should allow the BJP to elect its leaders.People who join the RSS to fastrack their career at the BJP should be thrown out of the BJP and the RSS.
The BJP is no more a party with a difference and has its own share of corrupt and power hungry leaders.
Regards,
who is reading all this analysis.. are the real leaders of bjp even bothered.. i hope they read at least some of the articles and views presented here..
Dear Mohan,
We have control on the inputs only and not on the outputs. Writing an analysis is our job whether someone reads it or not.
Regards,
Analyzing the States Making the Difference between Congress and BJP -
I’m not going into states like UP, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Haryana where the BJP has come second in many seats and needs to work had to regain its winning position.
Only considering the Organizationally weak states - TN, WB, Kerala and AP -
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that while all of us keep repeating WB, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal as states where BJP needs to improve organization, we are missing out on ground realities as well as history.
Tamil Nadu has been alternating between Dravidian Parties since 1960s. Now it is not like Congress won handsomely here. Even Home Minister P.Chidambaram just managed to scrap thru’ while others like Mani Shanker Aiyer were defeated. It was more a case of DMK defeating AIADMK thanks to Vijaykant’s DMDK cutting into AIADMK’s vote share.
Lets move to WB and situation is no different. Trinamool Congress is the real victor and Communists the looser. The Congress has just managed 6 seats of which, Pranab Mukerjee’s, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi’s and A.B.A.Gahni Khan Choudhary’s seats account for 3 out of 6.
When Trinamool and BJP had allied in 1999, they won 10 and 2 seats respectively. So it goes to show the strength of Mamata Banerjee. Of course she got 9 more seats this time thanks to Nandigram and Singur which were not there in 1999 and Buddhadeb is not able to match Jyoti Basu.
Next lets move to Kerala, where the Communists’ infighting alone has helped Congress register an impressive victory. If that was not there, the scale of the victory would have been lesser. How much ever the BJP tries because of certain historical facts and the demographic composition of the state, winning even 1 or 2 seats in this state is going to be impossible. Remember that in the peaks of 1998 and 1999 when BJP registered victories in North-east, Bengal, AP and TN also, they could not open the account in Kerala.
Now lets come to the last state in the list i.e AP. This state IS PROVING TO BE THE BIGGEST FACTOR IN EVERY CONGRESS VICTORY. It was this state in 1991, 2004 and 2009 that came to Congress rescue. Here I’m in complete agreement with the author that BJP stands a good chance if it can present a credible alternative. BJP has been around for a long time here. Very few people know that in 1984 when BJP registered its all time low of 2 seats, they were Mehsana from Gujarat and Hanamkonda from A.P. Every state in India except UP has a place for only 2 parties at a given point of time. Now in AP it is Congress and TDP.
For the BJP in AP, two options are available -
The easy one is to convince Chandrababu Naidu that even if he stands alone, he is not going to get the Minority vote which is the main reason he does not ally with BJP. The reasons are simple that minorities in AP have a Congress-MIM alliance. No way the Muslims are going to go anywhere else. For christians, they are having a Christian CM for the first time and they will stick to YSR and Congress.
The second is something which needs tremendous hard work coupled with some luck to replace TDP as the alternative to Congress in AP. The difficulty is because BJP lacks someone who can offer strong leadership coupled with proven admin skills of Chandrababu calibre. So why would anyone think of voting BJP ? The “LUCK” factor is that due to some internal strife TDP is weakened and cannot offer an alternative or some incident which can whip up the emotions happens during Congress rule that people look to BJP as a need in the state.
Summary -
BJP will need a regional alliance in TN because even the Congress cannot manage without one. If BJP were a serious contender from rest of India and only Tamil Nadu is proving to be the weak point, then we have seen 1998 AIADMK go with BJP and in 1999, DMK go with BJP. On both occasions the alliances won.
If the BJP can win so substantially in UP and other strongholds that Congress is forced to ally with Left, then Mamata can crossover and so Bengal can be won.
BJP can displace Congress from Orissa and become the second Party to BJD there and make up for the absence in Kerala.
But let me conclude by saying that for BJP to convincingly defeat Congress in a national election, AP is one state that is definitely needed and here if it can even reach a position of winning 15 seats, then that would take it very close to power.
Remember it is not TN, but AP which is the MAKE OR BREAK state. Imagine if Naidu had won AP in 2004, there was no way a UPA would have been forming government. So AP holds the KEY TO Power.
As far as AP is concerned, BJP has to intorspect with brutal frankness. Its leadership cant give a speech convincingly nor can build the organization. Worst still they are stalling the rise of G. Kishan Reddy. This guy has to be one of the best MLAs in India. He s charismatic, a great orator, mass leader, very young 30 something and has a very very impressive CV.
I am willing to put my money on the line and say if BJP manages to get some kind of organuization working in AP, this guy can do the rest and be a CM one day. Far fetched thinking but only the BJP is stopping itself by relying on old baggage time and again…
Mohanji,
Thank you because of you I now know G Kishen reddy. Can you please tell more about him.
Regards,
Mohanji I am from A.P and I am fed with the failure of BJP in our state for last 20 years. Dattatreya has immensely failed in his leadership to provide a vision to BJP in A.P. Imagine if BJP can win Karnataka why can’t BJP win in A.P. I heard lot of good things about G Kishen Reddy and he should be made the leader of BJP for A.P. It is time for Dattatreya to go. He couldn’t win the MP seat for Secunderabad second time consecutively. Shame on him. It is not that BJP can’t find a dynamic leader for A.P it is because of their Ostrich mentality which is holding them back to grow in A.P.
Hello! I really like this website - you folks are doing a good job in getting a dialogue started. I am not a supporter of the BJP although I like many things about the party. However, I do like the comments, and the introspection that this website shows. This is wonderful indeed and shows great commitment to our tradition of democracy!
For Swami105:
http://kishanreddy.com/
This is Sri Kishan Reddy’s website. He was the leader of BJYM in the past and he was the global head of International Youth Organization to fight Terrorism.
It is said that the Government Primary schools in Kishan’s constituency are the best in the state due to the infrastructure upliftment they got in the last 5 years.
For those of you who want a taste of his oratory (an who can understand telugu) please listen to this hard hitting reply to Governor speech in AP assembly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmiQv5pbLo4
More about him here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7QgdkEG0Iw
I agree with SKG though I am reluctant to take names
I think the BJP comes across as a lethargic party unwilling to wake up from the slumber. It can be a serious force atleast in the Telangana region - only if it is willing to promote younger leaders. If not we will be writing same kind of things after 5 years cursing the same people.
I agree 100% with all the people and even I found out that G.Kishan Reddy who was the Youth BJP President has everything going for him. He has been relected to AP assembly. In fact this time in AP Assembly election he has defeated the AP Congress President Sreenivas. What better CV do you need? But we still have Bhandaru Dattatreya heading the state unit….does it make any sense?
Also we need to keep Teleangan issue in back burner till BJP becomes main opposition party atleast. It is so silly that BJP has no MP even from Telengan for last to LS elections and we keep talking of creating a separate state. First become a force in AP and then talk of other things.
The above suggestions are really heartening.I hope and pray the central leadership pays attention to them.These are constructive suggestions which should be immediately looked into.The hard work should start from now onwards so that the effect can be felt in 2014.As far as Maharashtra is concerned MNS has emerged more powerful after the election and unless an agreement is reached with them its a lost case for BJP.
AP BJP has to intorspect with brutal frankness. Enough of being a weak party. I am from AP and I do not see any reluctance in AP people to vote for BJP. I havent seen anybody who seriously hates the party. One reason they say for not voting for BJP is: “Leadership”. We need fierce leaders for AP BJP. We have to build agitations and go into the people and utilise these 5 years for re-building the party here. Lets make a fresh start. Hope the central office notices this.
dont worry about the future of bjp.this time bjp
lost this election beacause of poor voting percentage.next general election bjp gets more partners than this time.some regional party`s learnt lesson this election especially tdp in andra and aidmk in tamilnadu.
next general election tdp and aidmk with bjp,otherwise these two regional partys not existed after general election.
uttar pradesh already ajit singh`s party with bjp.
next time mayawathi or mulyam singh with bjp other wise these two does not exist after election.
this election clearly shows regional party`s either with bjp or congress otherwise no future for these partys.communist party`s lost its charm so regional party`s does not want comunist partys as its partner.