There are leaders and organizers
like Arun Jaitley who look good on TV and win sometimes. Then you have people
like Sanjay Joshi with (allegedly) a lot of organizational capability but with
precious little to show for. In fact Joshi was shoved down the gullet of the BJP
workers trying to win the all important state of UP by the Nitin Gadkari (with
RSS pulling the strings and trying to cut Modi down to size). The result was
nothing short of a disaster.
And then you have someone like
Amit Shah who may not have a lot of the backing of the BJP brass or the RSS or
may not cut a dashing picture or speak well (like Sushmaji) but has the Midas
touch when it comes to winning elections. He has been credited with winning the
Gujarat state elections for the BJP (of course the job is slightly easy when you
are selling Narendra Modi to the voters) under extremely difficult conditions
and that too three times. The very fact that he has been targeted by the
Congress as viciously as Modi himself tells you how he is valued by Modi and
feared by Congress.
Shah by no means could have been
an easy sell to the BJP old timers. The reason why Modi is feared by the so
called New Delhi establishment is because he is constantly changing the rules of
the game. When he reaches New Delhi, NV Subramanian said, “Modi sabki chutti kar
dega”. If Modi is a tall leader then Shah is the shadow he casts. Bringing up
Shah to the national scene implies one thing only. Business as usual is not
going to happen anymore. Shah’s sole aim is to ensure his boss’ victory on the
national scene and he will do whatever it takes including the shakeup BJP to its
core. This cannot be sitting well with established fat cats.
Since even the political novices
know that the road to New Delhi goes through UP, the significance of Shah’s
appointment as the BJP in-charge of the 2014 elections cannot be lost on anyone.
The fact that
he has been appointed despite of a stiff opposition from non-performing leaders
in UP and Delhi tells you one thing clearly which is Bhai Narendra Damodardas
Modi is going to be BJP’s nominee for the PM candidate. You
can take that to the bank. The moment my friend Swami Thambi told me about this
appointment, I told him that he can now rest easy. Modi is going to be our man
in the ring. Wow. How long I have waited to write that and I write it with a
cautious optimism in my heart and a tear of joy in my eye.
The politics in UP is nasty, no
more than politics anywhere else but the size of the prize (eighty MPs) makes it
worse. Politicians are willing to cut any Faustian pact to win this prize.
Akhilesh Yadav is trying to get reservation for Muslims despite of the fact that
his tenure has seen almost one Hindu-Muslim riot every month. The state gets
divided into castes and then into subcastes. Everything that is wrong with our
society gets magnified many-fold in UP because of the size of the prize. Sleazy
deals, SOPs, bribing the voters, economy destroying social programs are all part
of the game. All the new BJP administration (Bravo Mr. Rajnath Singh) has done
is to send Amitbhai Shah to UP. It’s like Hanumanji being sent to Lanka.
If you needed a sign of what Shah
is going to do then look no further than his first order of business. He along
with Mukhtar A Naqvi and Lakshmikant Bajpayi are going to court arrest in Rampur
which is anything but. Rampur actually is the modern day Lanka because it
epitomizes the worst of UP politics. By taking the fight into the enemy
territory, Shah has sounded the war-shankh. He is telling the Yadavs and Khans
that the BJP under him is willing and able to fight them on their turf. As a BJP
supporter, I say it is high-bloody time that these guys are given a fight of
their lives.
The path is long and treacherous
for Shah but if Narendra Bhai has faith in him then so should we. He will have
to weed out the non-performers no matter how established and bring up the
capable leaders toiling in anonymity. He will have to acclimatize himself with
the caste politics of UP and play the game accordingly. I am sure the man who
along with Bhai Narendra took on the entire Congress party (with CBI, NGOs and
the media) and still won in Gujarat is capable of dealing with the cesspool we
know as UP. Clearly, Shah has Modi and Rajnath Singh in his corner. I sincerely
hope that the UP leaders throw their weight behind this man rather than
sabotaging him. After Shah’s appointment, one UP BJP leader said that why should
he work if the credit is going to go west. To that clown I say this “ If by
performing you mean like you did in the last state election then please fold
your tent, wrap up your lungi and get the hell out of town. This is a man’s game
and has no room for village idiots”.
Appointment of Amit Shah tells me
that all is well in UP. That is the happy me. The real me tells me that this is
as best as we can do in UP. With Amit Shah in charge under Modi’s guidance, I
say it is pretty good.
The following is a fantastic
analysis by Praveen Patil
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