The BJP’s three fresh faces

NEW DELHI: By making three unknown leaders the Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the Modi-Shah duo has at one stroke driven home several points. It leaves all senior contenders who have been bypassed so awed that they cannot but go along in good humour. To opposition party leaders, this political manoeuvre should be proof that the BJP can play the caste card just as well as the religious. And to voters at large, it reinforces the impression yet again that Prime Minister Modi calls all the shots and thus can get things done.

Attempted by anyone but Modi-Shah, this gambit of choosing lightweights Bhajan Lal Sharma in Rajasthan, Mohan Yadav in Madhya Pradesh and Vishnu Deo Sai in Chhattisgarh would have been called a wild gamble. Sharma is a first-time MLA. Yadav stood in the third row for the group photo of the newly-elected BJP MLAs in Madhya Pradesh. Sai is the more experienced of the three, having been a Union minister, but was nobody’s tip to lead Chhattisgarh.

But they are Prime Minister Modi’s horses for courses. Mohan Yadav is an OBC leader with affiliations to the RSS. His promotion to Chief Minister offers a fresh face to the people of Madhya Pradesh and is expected to blunt the Mandalite appeal of the INDIA alliance. Picking up the support of important caste groups within the OBC-EBC spectrum is a tactic adopted by the BJP as a response to demands for caste censuses in several states. In the recent election campaign in Telangana, it ditched its Hindu polarisation strategy midway and instead made a determined OBC pitch. It didn’t win many seats but served to show the party in a new light.

Similarly, Sai in Chhattisgarh is a tribal leader, and his selection for the Chief Minister’s post is a nod to the social composition of the state, where tribals account for 30% of the population. The BJP’s pitch to tribal groups has been successful in several states so far, most notably in Gujarat and now in Chhattisgarh where it won 17 of the 29 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes.

The outreach to tribal groups in Chhattisgarh, to Pasmanda Muslims in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and to OBC groups in Telangana and Madhya Pradesh shows the BJP’s willingness to go beyond its native polarisation strategy to stitch together different coalitions in different states. For a majoritarian party to convince subaltern parties to hop on board requires political vigour and decisive leadership, which Modi provides.

Unfortunately, the Congress, despite its hoary past of forging robust social coalitions, has lost that dynamism. It continues to fall back on tired old formulae, recommended to the high command by self-serving feudal cliques, and compounds the mistake with weak leadership by its family scions. This latter lot, steeped in the manners and privileges of elitism, wrongly believes that good old liberal-western Samaritanism is sufficient to win the favour of voters. To these scions, appearing to be well-mannered and earnest passes for real political commitment and passion. Middle India sees this as privilege talking down to it and looks elsewhere for a leadership that can get things done, especially the tangible things that matter to it.