BJP president Nitin Gadkari cannot be faulted for not trying to be inclusive. The national team he has announced on Tuesday has 11 vice-presidents, 12 general secretaries and 15 national secretaries, which includes old and new Hindutva firebrands like Vinay Katiyar (vice president) and Varun Gandhi (national secretary), and political heavyweights like Vasundhara Raje (general secretary).
Hema Malini (vice-president), Smriti Irani (national secretary) and Navjot Singh Sidhu (national secretary) provide the celebrity quotient. If nothing else, Gadkari's choice has turned heads and set people talking. He has created, in advertising parlance, the buzz. It may not, however, be sufficient to propel the party into a future mode which is what BJP needs to do to get to the next level.
There seems to be paucity of political talent and not enough people who have worked at the state and grassroots levels have been pulled into the national team. This is a problem not just with the BJP but with other major political parties as well. For long, the BJP has prided itself on the fact that it is a party where
talent was the ticket to success. Celebrity status and family connections seem to be gaining ground here as well.
Hema Malini has carried herself with dignity but she did not display any political spark in the past. Along with Smriti Irani, she brings in the glamour factor, something that need not be scoffed at. But there is little of experience and judgment that she can bring to the party's national parleys. Cricketer Sidhu is indeed a popular figure, at least in the circle of couch potatoes. But his political skills remain untested. It is true that in the present day it is not enough to have faceless, dedicated party workers. You need the crowd-pullers as well, people who are seen and heard. Celebrities have their own value.
The inclusion of Varun Gandhi is sure to raise eyebrows, and it betrays BJP's agonising dilemma. The Gandhi label seems to have been the overwhelming factor in favour of Varun apart from the fact that he won his spurs through controversial anti-Muslim rhetoric during the 2009 Lok Sabha election campaign. The choice of Varun shows that the party is not unwilling to play its own Nehru-Gandhi card, with all its delightful ironies.
These are mere details and asides. The real problems and challenges remain to be tackled.
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