The triumvirate in the BJP
has complete stranglehold over the party

The BJP is in doldrums. The party is led by those who cannot communicate and connect with the cadre or the people any more.
 

The essence of any kind of leadership is the ability of the leader to communicate and connect with people. What would you say of leaders who have no clue if what they say really matters to their audience and yet speak volumes, propound pet political and economic theories, narrate anecdotes from the past and the present, hurl accusations at their opponents, preach what they do not practice, repeat the same old boring rhetoric a hundred times, and largely speak through their non thinking hats?

This is the state of mind of all the reining BJP leaders and those who have been covering the Silver Jubilee convention of the BJP in Mumbai can clearly sense it. These leaders cannot communicate. They give long speeches that move none, not even the hard core workers and second, third, and fourth rung leaders of the party who are attending the ‘historic’ convention.
 
 

 They are so ineffective. The reasons are not unknown. They are no more men and women of conviction and they have lost the penchant and capacity to live and die for ideas and ideals. And above all, they are not truthful. They criticize opponents without conviction and offer knee jerk reactions to important incidents. They want power just because they have been in power. They have also lost all sense of logic. Their political and economic resolutions are all uninspiring bull and bunkum and contradict the programmes and policies pursued by them in their 6-years rule in Dilli. It would be stupidity and waste of time  to even comment upon these useless documents that offer niether a new direction nor hope to anyone.

They lay claim to turning bread and butter issues like Bijli, Sadak, and Paani into the priority of the nation. But they  seem more concerned about their own bread and butter issue, the issue of regaining ‘Dilli Ki Gaddi’. They unexpectedly lost the race by whiskers and their plan to make Advani the Prime Minister of India came unstuck. The shock of that defeat has turned into frustration now. Why else will they be talking incessantly about the next general elections that are still far away?

All through the convention, leaders and speakers played with bombastic words and phrases to sing paeans to the ruling triumvirate of the party. This was unprecedented. One of the delegates summarized this as ‘Parikrama’. If you want to be anywhere in the party, you must perambulate around Advani, Vajpayee, and Pramod Mahajan. The message is loud and clear.

Even the anointment of Rajnath Singh as the party president means nothing. This is an interim arrangement and can be of interest to a few photojournalists and media men on the BJP beat. It will have no impact on the functioning of the party organization. The stranglehold of this ideologically inept triumvirate is absolute and anyone who raises the voice of dissent will be sent into oblivion. To kijiye ‘parikrama’ aur ‘Mahima Mandan’ trimurti ki, agar rehna hai party mein aur kuch banana hai.
 

This writer also spoke to a few of the BJP’s Working Committee members. What happens in the working committee? Some discussions and dialogue on the matters of great importance? Nothing actually happens. Everyone in the committee knows it will be foolish if you spoke your mind out. You have to read the minds and guess the motivesof the triumvirate and fashion your interactions and responses accordingly. It does not call for much effort, as the wishes of the ruling troika are well known by now. At times it works very well for a party organization, provided the leadership knows its way about and can come out with smart ideas and programmes to galvanize party workers and people into action.

It is not going to work for the BJP though. The leaders themselves have lost all sense of direction. They cannot think through a crisis coherently. The supreme leader and mascot of the party has turned prematurely senile. He does not want to call it quits though. He thinks he is still relevant. He keeps emerging from his deep slumber every now and then to assert his Godliness. In all these conventions and public meetings, he sits there on the stage as the centrepiece while speakers after speakers sing Kirtans and Chalisas of the six years of his rule and how he exploded the Atom Bomb and defeated Pakistan in Kargil.
 

 And look at who among the second rung leaders is finally going to take up the mantle of party leadership from the aging duo? Pramod Mahajan, a typical personification of middle-class mediocrity of urban-Maharashtrian variety, and a media bombast, and  Bhashanbaaz.  He is neither a wise guy nor a visionary. His wisdom lies in using ornamental words to communicate non-sense and his vision rarely goes beyond creating machine-operated stages where lotus blooms out of the artificial fog created by fog machines.

Final report on the BJP convention will come later

RKS