Anil Anand
It was on the cards that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would spring a surprise in naming the BJP’s Presidential candidate. It is also well known, after three years of his style of governance, that he reposes his faith in out-of-the-box decisions and solutions. By now, after impressive 2014 Lok Sabha and recent UP Assembly electoral victories, it is obvious that team Modi is desperately looking beyond the Sangh Parivar’s traditional so called ‘swaran Hindu’ support base which in some measures it has been able to achieve.
But decision, though belated, of the Congress-led opposition conglomerate’s to field former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar as their candidate for Presidential election has made the contest interesting. It is detestable and sad but a fact that Presidential election has become ‘my dalit versus your dalit’ contest.
Who is to be blamed for this? This is a full-fledged debate in itself but it remains a fact that none of the two players could be absolved. Such a contest has further perched the dalits as a commodity in the electoral market rather than helping them in any way to be extricated out of the social morass that they are in.
In fact, the contest had assumed startling proportions when Bihar Chief Minister and JD-U-chief Nitish Kumar made a somersault and withdrew from the opposition formation to support Kovind. Incidentally Mr Kovind was Bihar Governor till few days back and is a dalit. No wonder that opposition camp spearheaded by Congress president Sonia Gandhi was forced by this situation to field another dalit against him to make it “my dalit versus your dalit” contest.
Courage is certainly not the refuge of political crop of the day. It was an opportunity for united opposition to show courage and field a candidate of other variety. Perhaps Gopal Krishan Gandhi or agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan would have rightly fitted in this bracket but it was not for Mrs Gandhi alone to take that call as Nitish Kumar had already set a reverse trend.
But the fact that Meira Kumar belongs to a prominent dalit family and is daughter of former Deputy Prime minister Jagjivan Ram, and that she hails from Bihar has given a distinct flavour to the contest. No doubt she is a distinguished name and an achiever in her own right in addition to being the daughter of dalit icon. But her Bihar roots seem to have proved handy for Sonia Gandhi and her strategists to try and beat Nitish Kumar at his own game.
So how does Modi’s decision to select a dalit as BJP’s Presidential nominee fits into his electoral gameplan for future? For records sake the party chief Amit Shah and other senior leaders have vehemently denied that sole criteria for selecting Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind as Presidential candidate was his caste, but overall profile weighed heavily in the final count. Kovind’s name is politically more correct than this statement which has been made in a bid to fallaciously create an impression that party has not forgotten its founding principles.
Whatever the reasons might be behind selection of Kovind, this is already proving to be a masterly stroke so far as Modi is concerned. First and foremost, putting up a dalit candidate might have antagonised BJP’s high caste leaders and supporters, if at all; it has proved to be akin to letting cat among the pigeon. This analogy is to the opposition camp which showed serious signs of distress within hours of BJP announcing a dalit name.
It is hard to believe that Modi’s decision to field a dalit candidate was sudden. It is a strategic decision taken after thorough homework. So why Kovind who belongs to UP and till recently was Bihar Governor? And why not some other dalit face?
These are interesting questions as the entire Kovind chapter is woven around their possible answers. The immediate answer to these questions lies in another question as to why Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar did not wait for June 22 Opposition parties meeting to declare his intentions in backing the BJP nominee. In fact he undermined the opposition unity by declaring JD (U) support for Kovind a day before the meeting.
It is not a rocket science to fathom that Nitish Kumar was in the loop when Modi had started thinking of his party’s Presidential candidate. Subsequent developments bear this out. It would not be wrong to say that Kovind could be the joint selection of Modi-Nitish duo. The Bihar CM was already on Modi’s radar following former’s suo motu support for controversial demonetisation against the wishes of his allies Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal. On top of that growing idiosyncrasies of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav causing discomfiture to Nitish might have made it easier for BJP managers to plot a situation where the latter could walk-out on opposition camp and at the same time dare the Yadav.
The NDA camp knows it well that Lalu can play the role of a dangerous catalyst in uniting the opposition camp. Ostensibly, they fully well knew that opening a can of worms against Lalu in the form of corruption cases would hasten Nitish distancing himself from the former and also opposition at least for Presidential elections. It is not that the cases of corruption, currently in limelight, against Lalu and his family members are new but this as an ammunition must have been kept in reserve to be exploded at an opportune time.
Finally, the blast has been caused after a series of systematic exposes by former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi on various shady property deals involving Lalu’s immediate family members. There was always a feeling in political circles that this other Modi has been sidelined in BJP politics due to his proximity with Nitish Kumar which the former kept intact even after parting ways with JD (U). This relationship seems to have played a stellar role in Nitish treading towards BJP again.
Kovind’s choice as Presidential candidate has all the pointers that indicate that Modi is a quintessential politician who understands the need of political symbolism even it meant keeping aside Sangh Parivar’s traditional thinking for a while, even in the Presidential election. Primarily this is aimed at 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which UP with 80 seats will be significant and so would be Bihar with Nitish Kumar as an ally. It is a known fact that dalits voted for BJP in a big way in UP both in last General and recent assembly elections so that is why significance of Kovind being a dalit and that too from the politically significant state.
The BJP’s calculatedly played dalit card alongside Nitish’s decision has totally unnerved the opposition. His decision to abandon the opposition camp in midstream has further made going tough for Congress president Sonia Gandhi and RJD chief Lalu Yadav to challenge Modi’s might in the Presidential elections. A good fight could have been a good precursor to Lok Sabha elections and primarily that was the idea behind consolidation of opposition camp.
In all probability the opposition’s dream to treat Presidential poll as a warm up game for the bigger electoral fight in 2019 seems to have been shattered unless something dramatic happens. There is no last word in politics and two years is too long a period in politics to predict anything but for opposition to remain relevant in the final battle it would require a herculean effort and political management of the highest level to counter Factor-Modi.
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