BJP: What went wrong?

Jaswant Singh might not have had the slightest idea of getting impeached from the BJP party over his praise for the founder of Pakistan. What prompted him to write such a piece of literature which is totally against the ideology of the party which he served for 30 long years is a big question?

The case of Mr. Singh is not the only case where BJP has lost its image in public but unfortunately there had been countless number of cases and incidents off late which had made BJP suffer in public. Ever since the fall of the “ Indian Shining “ campaign BJP has not recovered yet and is not able to provide good competition to Congress. It’s not that they are not able to digest the defeat in the election but I believe their downfall is has more fundamental intrinsic and extrinsic reasons behind it.

Succession Planning : - Not only the corporate world but even the political parties requires proper succession planning , With the ageing of the founding members of BJP there is no clear leader which had been identified to take on the responsibility of the next leader and it had made people fight for posts inside the party . With Gandhi’s as a controlling centre of the Congress it had never been the case with Congress.

Conflict about Hindutva Ideology: - With the growing liberal face of Indian society and a major proportion of Indian population being in mid twenties, it had become rather confusing for the party to stick to their long term political ideology of Hindutva. This confusion has created a loss for BJP as even the staunch supporters of BJP are now confused about what BJP really stands for.

Rise of SP/ BSP: - Success in UP was one of the reason which made BJP prosper in the national politics. There was a time when BJP used to win 50 seats in UP. The rise of BSP and SP had made the equation very tough for BJP in UP where elections are closely integrated with the game of caste politics. Now we have four ways fight in the UP elections with Congress emerging as a strong force. This year assembly elections might be very interesting and there are strong chances of revival of Congress in UP.

Instant Feedback..

Throwing a shoe at a politician has now been discovered as a new and effective way to express the dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. It’s like a instant feedback, no question asked.

The best part of this feedback is the kind of visibility it creates, the incident with President Bush made people order 1000’s of pair of same shoes from the Iraqi shoemaker. Websites developed different e-games on the same theme, Wow instant Hit.

Is this the true democracy or the freedom of expression, I don’t know  that but yes it is full of action and media is simply loving it.  

 Does Mr Chibambaram deserve it? , he has been a brilliant finance minister for India and just recently appointed as the home minister. I don’t think He deserved it, but who says life is Fair!

Election Time ..

This year’s general elections in India are not as exciting an affair as it used to be in the past. The real limelight has been taken up by other news like sub-prime crisis and its affect on world economy, terrorism in Pakistan, President Obama and M S Dhoni for their novel styles and achievements, IPL Blues and even Inflation numbers etc .  

The other important feature of this election is the lack of Real Issues.  I cannot differentiate much between the different national parties on the basis of their manifestos. They are all promising to alleviate poverty and built a strong nation, nobody knows how they will do it .I really don’t understand why we don’t have public debates where leaders from different parties put their views on different issues and provide us a way to differentiate between them. TV debates can be a cost effective solution as the penetration of television in India is quite good and people can sit in comfort of their homes to participate in the dance of democracy.

This year election has witnessed internet being used as a mode of communication by different political parties. BJP and congress is trying to woe the educated and the youth of the country by putting their advertisements and links in the popular sites which Indians mostly browse. Lets see how many of these internet displays gets converted into votes.