Marketing Modi Magic and Yoda Yogi in Uttar Pradesh
In the words of George Herbert, the Welsh devotional lyricist: “Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.” The BJP, currently in a devotional mood in UP with the Ram Temple, is playing this number. Unfazed by the pandemiccreated negative perception, its leadership has already written the script for a win in the 2022 Assembly elections. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath display enviable confidence about their party’s prospects in India’s largest state. In spite of the walloping in Bengal, they haven’t lost confidence in the party’s poll moxie acquired during the past seven years. Of course, the architect of victory was Amit Shah with his mastery over election methods and machinery that gave BJP a record haul of seats in successive Lok Sabha elections and the state elections in 2017.
Voting is still nine months away. Yet the entire saffron leadership is in election mode. While Opposition parties like the SP and the BSP are conspicuous by their absence on the ground, the BJP is mobilising its rank and file at the panchayat level where they got a shellacking. Yogi has personally visited almost all the districts and is concentrating on implementing all pending projects and bringing all factional leaders together.
Following Modi’s directions, Radha Mohan Singh, former Union Minister and UP in-charge, along with Sunil Bansal, RSS pracharak and organisational secretary of the state BJP, are holding regular palaver in each district and taking feedback from all MPs, MLAs and other office bearers on positive and negative issues. However, their main objective is to instil confidence among their cadres that the party is still the people’s most favoured choice with support from all communities and castes. They have advised a deviation from communal propaganda to concentrate on publicising BJP’s effective leadership at the state and central level. The slogan is likely to be “Modi ke Nam par, Yogi ke Kaam par”. From the state president to the groundworker, all poll warriors have been told to market the clean image of Modi and Yogi since all their opponents have mud on their shirts. Moreover, around 100 tainted sitting MLAs of the 310 odd legislators in UP will be dropped. A Lucknow comeback would be the stepping stone for Modi 3.0 in 2024. The Prime Minister makes it a point to post a tweet lauding Yogi’s performance as chief minister.
Insiders land trust in trouble in Ayodhya
The Sangh Parivar is seriously assessing the damage created by the controversial land deals in Ayodhya to the election outcome in the state next year. Closed door parleys are being held at various levels, and each and every land deal is being legally and morally scrutinised by babus and netas. So far, the justification given by top leaders for the dubious deal is that all land was bought at less than the market price. However, local leaders haven’t been quite able to purvey convincing explanations for such quick gun deals to reap huge profits.
The I-T records of the sellers are being investigated to check tax evasion. Trust takes decades to build, a couple of seconds to break and centuries to rebuild. It was after seven decades of legal, social and political struggle that Ram Bhakts got a chance to rebuild the divine edifice. Once the Supreme Court cleared all the hurdles, both the Centre and the state administration stepped on the gas to realise the decades old Parivar dream. Nripen Mishra, a retired IAS officer with impeccable credentials, was handpicked to supervise Mandir construction.
Never before has such huge amounts been spent on the construction of a religious structure except on the Somnath Temple under the supervision of a trust created by the Union government. Since then, the rise and expansion of saffron ideology has been driven by Mission Ram Mandir. The BJP and the RSS combined to create the political Hindu who actively supports the idea of Ram. ‘Mandir Vaheen Banayege’ (Will construct the Mandir there only) wasn’t just a slogan but an article of faith. With many prominent BJP leaders being involved in the questionable buying and selling of Ayodhya land, the High Command could punish them to neutralise their toxic impact. Meanwhile, BJP’s opponents are collecting more masala about land transactions of the temple site.
Pawar Parley Pummels Pollster
Excessive marketing can often end with massive flops. Take the recent highly hyped meeting of ‘likeminded individuals’ at the New Del- hi residence of Sharad Pawar. It was just a gettogether of a few socially and political compatible personalities. But Prashant Kishor, the artful and affluent hawker of political parties as products, created the impression through a friendly network of Pr agencies and selective media that it was his idea to bring all anti-BJP and anti-Modi parties on one stage. Since he is associated with the winning side from modi to mamata, he gets easy access to politi- cians. He met Pawar in mumbai and the media stories popped up about his effort to topple modi with mamata’s help. Pawar, the great listener, never reveals his mind unless he has a horse in the race. Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha is in touch with Pawar and netas of other parties, including the Congress, to connect and float a common platform to raise incendiary issues in future. He floated the non-party platform rashtra manch and requested Pawar to host its first meeting, which he gladly agreed. It was attended by leaders of all shades — credible, irrelevant or attention-deprived. Kishor was neither invited nor was he present. Sinha and Pawar clarified that it wasn’t a pow wow to manufacture an alternative to modi. The best part — the canny maratha didn’t utter a single word during the two-hour chatathon but did lay out a scrumptious high tea to the participants of the experimental rendezvous.
Extended vocation without vacating government homes
The bureaucracy is the perpetual owner of the government. While political leaders are dispensable, a privileged gang of mandarins survive and thrive in every dispensation. In seven years of the NDA regime, a set of top Indian Administrative Service officers wrangled extensions in the same posts or got new assignments — not once or twice but even thrice or for the fourth time. Recently, the government gave the third one- year extension to the NITI Aayog CEO who has crossed the age of 65. Normal civil servants do not get this privilege.
LC Goyal, whose term as Home Secretary was abruptly terminated, is the first babu in recent years to get four extensions as chairman of the India Trade Promotion Organisation. Some paper pushers have even managed to retain their Lutyen’s bungalows. Another senior IAS officer, who retired recently and had held several sensitive posts while occupying a massive sarkari bungalow, is lobbying for the allotment of a Type VII bungalow for his wife who does not belong to an All India Service. No wonder powerful apparatchiks have the leverage to convince the Union government to construct additional palatial homes as their post retirement abodes.
Prabhu Chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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