AAP victory is indeed a verdict on Modi’s arrogance

Pride & Fall / Snake & Ladder

The AAP tornado threw veterans of both BJP and Congress into the electoral dustbin in their traditional bastions in an election that was billed by the opposition as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. BJP leaders accepted the defeat as a "setback" but dismissed suggestions that it was a vote against the Modi government's performance. BJP's chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi, who was inducted into the party last minute to counter Arvind Kejriwal, lost from Krishna Nagar constituency, a seat held by the BJP since 1993 still she is saying I’m not lost, this is BJP lost. HA…HA…HA….

“AAP victory is indeed a verdict on Modi’s arrogance”

Hubris, in politics, is never cultivated. It really creeps in without your being aware of it. In a way this process is unconscious. You really can't do anything about it because for a period you see nothing outside your own narrative. You become aware of what lies outside only with the benefit of hindsight, post crash. Narendra Modi has experienced a small sample of this pattern in the Delhi election. He is lucky because he has time to course correct.

Many leaders in the past have fallen victim to this pattern. Of course, this phenomenon was more acute in the days of Indira Gandhi when India didn't have a decentralised polity. Modi seemed to have been following Indira Gandhi's style in state assembly election after election. Delhi has put a stop to that. Slogans like "Indira is India, India is Indira" are unimaginable in today's polity where young voters have far less patience. Technology shrinks time, space and patience.

The overwhelming presence of Modi Bhakts in the social media space is not to be seen on the scale we saw during the Lok Sabha election and the months after he became PM. Where have they all disappeared, one doesn't know. Has a Modi fatigue set in? Has Modi spoken too much too early? Such questions may become more frequent in the days to come.

More generally, are Narendra Modi and Amit Shah aware of the kind of arrogance their body language has conveyed in recent months, especially after the victories in Maharashtra and Haryana elections?  Two of Modi's remarks in public meetings take the cake. He told an audience in Delhi that they should vote for him because he was proving to be lucky for the people. Even more self-obsessive was his claim that a BJP government in Delhi, if voted, would work out of fear of Modi. Megalomania comes so naturally to Modi that he talks about himself in the third person! One has rarely come across leaders doing that --except for Rahul Gandhi in his now infamous Times Now interview.

In his first big public meeting in J&K election campaign, he boasted, "It is only the Modi government which showed courage to make the Army apologies for a wrong encounter killing."

Arrogance was also on display in the manner in which Modi and some close advisors around him built a new narrative, which turned into a self-delusion, that the PM's ever growing popularity after successive assembly election victories gave him the right to circumvent democratic procedures.

The manner in which BJP leaders casually talked about ordinances and joint sessions of a Parliament showed their belief that the people would forgive their beloved PM anything. At some level the caucus around Modi also came to believe that the mandate for Modi included a desire on the part of the people to have a semi-authoritarian leader. This was the big mistake Modi and Amit Shah made.

Indian polity is far too decentralized today to allow for any form of autocracy in democratic clothing. Indian voters are deeply averse to concentration of power. The defeat in Delhi evoked sharp comments from the Chief of Shiv Sena, Uddhav Thackeray, who said it was a defeat for Modi. It may be recalled how the Shiv Sena was humiliated by Amit Shah who is currently on a mission to establish Modi as the undisputed leader across the entire terrain where regional parties have taken firm roots over the past many decades.

The BJP has even coined an arrogant sounding expression for this exercise - "creeping acquisition" of new states to get a majority in a Rajya Sabha.

Amit Shah's aggressive forays in West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa have caused a backlash of sorts and some of these leaders are now talking about working with AAP on national issues.

The opposition is bound to corner Modi on several key legislations which the BJP supported as opposition but is in the process of reversing now. The Land Acquisition Ordinance will certainly act as glue for opposition unity in the forthcoming budget session which is expected to be very disruptive. Modi and Shah have squandered a lot of political capital in recent months. Political hubris has been responsible in large measure for the current state of affairs.

This is being felt even within the BJP where many leaders are smarting from a Modi-Amit Shah centric political decision making structure.

Modi will have to effect fundamental change in both the style and substance of his politics. His over- articulation in respect of some issues, and his deafening silence on others, will need review. The Delhi election result carries a larger message for the ruling dispensation. If Modi shrugs off the Delhi election as having no relevance to his style of governance, he would merely continue the narrative in which he is currently trapped.