Victory, not dogma, is the key

Sociologists and psychologists along with political scientists are still floundering to explain the Prime Minister Narendra Modi story, and they are now burdened with what can be called the pulsar or the twin-star phenomenon of Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. At the basic level, there is the view that Modi and Shah are the Hindutva duo. It has all the advantages of the simple story. Modi started as a RSS pracharak, Shah started much younger when he joined the RSS at the age of 14 as the tarun swayamsevak. Shah’s early entry into the public arena at a very young age is no anomaly. William Hague, who had succeeded John Major as the leader of the Conservative Party in 1997, and who is now Britain’s foreign secretary, joined the Young Conservatives in his adolescent days because he was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. The analogy between Shah and Hague ends there. This is a short digression.

The Hindutva bond between Modi and Shah is an insufficient explanation. The importance of dogma in the worldview of Modi is yet to be proved and it seems to be more tenuous in the case of Shah. Speaking to the media in 2004, Pramod Mahajan said that Modi left behind his caustic remarks about “James Michael Lyngdoh” and “Mia Musharraf” the moment 2002 Gujarat assembly elections ended and Modi had won, and that it was the media that has hung on to those phrases. It was an interesting clue about Modi but political newshounds — admirers as well as detractors — did not take it up. They saw Modi as an ideologically-driven man, when in fact he was a man driven by ambition and desire for power and success, and he was willing to work for it.

Talking to the media at the party headquarters a few days before the Lok Sabha poll counting, Shah said the strategy and tactics were secondary and what mattered was victory. He saw the approach and planning as means and for him the end was the real thing. He was sure of BJP’s overwhelming victory in Uttar Pradesh. Modi is also a man who believes in winning, and other things are not important. What connects the two then is the desire and belief in winning. Shah's election record shows that he has this winning streak, and Modi too has developed the same habit ever since he was sent to Gujarat as Chief Minister. Playing to win is the name of the game for them. Modi was no one’s man. He had to push himself and he did it with determination and a sense of calling. Shah is Modi’s man, and Modi would do everything to give the leg up to a man who shares his fierce desire to win.

The Modi-Shah partnership then is based on the pragmatics of winning elections. Modi convinced the BJP when he staked his claim to be Prime Minister on his capacity to win, and his promise of victory. He delivered victory. He is aware that winning is not a one-off thing and that one has to work for the next round the moment you score a win the earlier one. Modi is preparing for the next round of assembly elections, starting with Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. Shah was the right man to plot and work for future victories after his successful stint as the poll manager of the party in UP. And Shah seems to love nothing more than being in the poll mode.

Modi is also aware that the hard work that goes into winning elections is based on performance of the government. That was the lesson in Gujarat — that the government has to deliver on plans and programmes. That is what he has started doing as Prime Minister from day one.

Modi knows that government-party have to work closely if the next election is to be won, and that good governance alone is not enough to ensure a poll victory. So as head of government he wants to have a grip on the party as well because without a winning party machinery, good governance comes to nothing. He also needed someone who thinks like him, and who works like him, totally focussed. This unqualified utilitarian approach to politics with a professional zeal to do a good job might appear robotic, frighteningly mindless, and therefore contemptible. This idealistic derision of the utilitarian approach embodied by the Modi-Shah politics would be futile because future politics might hinge more than ever on everyday things to be done rather than some kind of useless ideational creativity. The imperfect novel that has hints of greatness, and the failed performance in a match that is heroic has no attraction for them. Modi and Shah think and they deal with ideas. They understand the importance of ideas. Ideas for these two do not however have romantic auras that are alluring in themselves. For the BJP duo ideas are like bat and ball, and you must be good at wielding the bat and using the ball.

There is a problem in this new practice of politics. It is that you will stay as long as you win, and defeat means the end. People who get accustomed to the winning streak would not know how to deal with a setback. The old adage about a great sportsperson is that he or she can survive defeat and make a comeback. The winner takes all approach carries the converse thesis: if you lose you are left with nothing.

This is the cul de sac or dead end of practical politics. Perhaps this political emptiness is better than the other extreme of blood-soaked ideology-driven politics that left millions dead in the 20th century, from Germany to Cambodia, and it is lingering in instances of sectarian strife of imploding Islamic polities in West Asia and north Africa.

The author is editorial consultant, dna