The recent assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana, have been a lesson in brand building. The emergence of Brand Modi. BJP is a national party with Pan-India presence, but there has never been a time, even with the charisma of A.B.Vajpayee and the chutzpa of L.K. Advani BJP always has state level leaders who largely decided how the party functioned at the state level. In fact it was a case of too many state leaders with their own personal fiefdoms which seldom cared about the National level performance. But one man changed it all Narendra Modi.
Where Modi goes, Amit Shah is not very far behind. Shah is the mastermind, the strategist who carved the way to Delhi for Modi starting with Gujarat. In India the seats of the Lok Sabha is decided based on the size of the state, with Uttar Pradesh being the biggest state in India, it is but natural that it has the maximum number of seats and it is obvious, that any party which wants to dominate at the Center has to have a big presence in the state. It is always said that the road to Delhi is through UP. Earlier it was the Congress which has a tremendous presence in UP which guaranteed a Central government, with the decimation of Congress in UP, it was the regional parties of UP like the Samajwadi Party or the Bahujan Samaj Party which often called the shots at the center due to the seats that they gained from UP.
Perhaps recongnizing this early on Modi dispatched Amit Shah to UP to target the key state ahead of the General Elections, and being the master strategist that he was Amit Shah engineered a coalition of candidates cutting across the caste, region and religious barrier in UP to get Modi the required number of seats to raise the BJP flag in Delhi. Therefore it was no doubt in anybody's mind that with Amit Shah handling the Maharashtra strategy there was going to be any chance of the BJP playing second fiddle to the Shiv Sena. For long Shiv Sena has held the sway in Maharashtra of being the bigger party in the coalition due to it being the regional party, but Amit Shah and Narendra Modi's decision to go solo in Maharashtra may have dealt the ultimate hit to the Shiv Sena. Sure the Sena went all rhetorical by saying the BJP ditched it and so on, but the BJP just did not break the alliance, it also hijacked Chatrapati Shivaji and the agenda of development from the Shiv Sena.
Another masterstroke played was the campaigning in Maharashtra and Haryana, it was all carried out by central level leadership of the BJP with the state leaders playing second fiddle to them. The current exit polls predict the BJP emerging as the single largest party in both Maharashtra and Haryana. Weather they get enough seats to form the government on their own is something that only time will tell, but by projecting Modi at the center and alluding to BJP lead governments at state level, the BJP has played a masterstroke by pitching itself as the saviour to the current crisis plaguing both Maharashtra and Delhi.
The strong emergence of the BJP central leadership led by Modi and Shah also has no counter from the opposition at National as well as State level. The anti-Modi rhetoric does not work and people are still wary of regional parties grabbing power and then not doing anything for them as seen during the Cong-NCP rule for the past 15 years. The BJP has capitalized on all of this very suavely by projecting itself as the party which stands for change and is pro-people.
If BJP wins in both Maharashtra and Haryana or even comes close to winning it on its own without any support, then we are on the cusp of another paradigm shift in Indian politics. Starting from mid 90's Indian politics was completely reliant on coalition governments, but with the current flow, the days of the coalition maybe soon over, with large National Parties once again coming to the forefront... What ever happens only time will tell, but the time of Modi-fication of India is now and it is a work in progress....
Where Modi goes, Amit Shah is not very far behind. Shah is the mastermind, the strategist who carved the way to Delhi for Modi starting with Gujarat. In India the seats of the Lok Sabha is decided based on the size of the state, with Uttar Pradesh being the biggest state in India, it is but natural that it has the maximum number of seats and it is obvious, that any party which wants to dominate at the Center has to have a big presence in the state. It is always said that the road to Delhi is through UP. Earlier it was the Congress which has a tremendous presence in UP which guaranteed a Central government, with the decimation of Congress in UP, it was the regional parties of UP like the Samajwadi Party or the Bahujan Samaj Party which often called the shots at the center due to the seats that they gained from UP.
Perhaps recongnizing this early on Modi dispatched Amit Shah to UP to target the key state ahead of the General Elections, and being the master strategist that he was Amit Shah engineered a coalition of candidates cutting across the caste, region and religious barrier in UP to get Modi the required number of seats to raise the BJP flag in Delhi. Therefore it was no doubt in anybody's mind that with Amit Shah handling the Maharashtra strategy there was going to be any chance of the BJP playing second fiddle to the Shiv Sena. For long Shiv Sena has held the sway in Maharashtra of being the bigger party in the coalition due to it being the regional party, but Amit Shah and Narendra Modi's decision to go solo in Maharashtra may have dealt the ultimate hit to the Shiv Sena. Sure the Sena went all rhetorical by saying the BJP ditched it and so on, but the BJP just did not break the alliance, it also hijacked Chatrapati Shivaji and the agenda of development from the Shiv Sena.
Another masterstroke played was the campaigning in Maharashtra and Haryana, it was all carried out by central level leadership of the BJP with the state leaders playing second fiddle to them. The current exit polls predict the BJP emerging as the single largest party in both Maharashtra and Haryana. Weather they get enough seats to form the government on their own is something that only time will tell, but by projecting Modi at the center and alluding to BJP lead governments at state level, the BJP has played a masterstroke by pitching itself as the saviour to the current crisis plaguing both Maharashtra and Delhi.
The strong emergence of the BJP central leadership led by Modi and Shah also has no counter from the opposition at National as well as State level. The anti-Modi rhetoric does not work and people are still wary of regional parties grabbing power and then not doing anything for them as seen during the Cong-NCP rule for the past 15 years. The BJP has capitalized on all of this very suavely by projecting itself as the party which stands for change and is pro-people.
If BJP wins in both Maharashtra and Haryana or even comes close to winning it on its own without any support, then we are on the cusp of another paradigm shift in Indian politics. Starting from mid 90's Indian politics was completely reliant on coalition governments, but with the current flow, the days of the coalition maybe soon over, with large National Parties once again coming to the forefront... What ever happens only time will tell, but the time of Modi-fication of India is now and it is a work in progress....
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