HVK Archives: Half a beginning
Half a beginning - Indian Express
Posted By ashok (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
25 June 1996
Title : Half a beginning
Publication : Indian Express
Date : June 25, 1996
THERE were three important lessons staring the Bharatiya
Janata Party in the face after Atal Behari Vajpayee
failed to secure parliamentary endorsement for continuing
as Prime Minister; it has learnt two of them. First, the
national executive meeting in Bhopal has acknowledged
that the pariy's status as@the largest political
formation can be strengthened and institutionalised only
if it goes beyond its traditional areas of influence in
northern and western India. The BJP has to strengthen its
position in Karnataka and make deep inroads into Assam,
Orissa and Andhra Pradesh if it is to emerge as a natural
successor to the Congress. Second, its obvious
reluctance to be too harsh on the regional parties
indicates that the BJP has not slammed the door on those
groups which preferred H. D. Deve Gowda to Vajpayee.
There seems to be a pragmatic awareness that the BJP may
well have to court the regional parties either in the
lifetime of this Lok Sabha or after the next election,
which it believes is not too far off.
The two developments could have been even more
encouraging if the BJP had simultaneously acknowledged
the need to dilute some.of its more distinctive
flamboyance. But, as Kalyan Singh's insistence that the
issue of the Ram temple will dominate the party's
campaign in Uttar Pradesh indicates, there is a wariness
over taking its traditional supporters too much for
granted. The BJP has to strike a delicate balance
between those who have flocked to it in the wake of its
aggressive Hindutva campaign and those new converts who
are inclined to see it as a more wholesome version of the
Congress. At this stage it cannot do without either.
Hence the importance attached to anticorruption as the
great unifier. However, the ploy to tar both the Congress
and the UF with the brush of corruption-friendliness will
work only if the party can demonstrate that it is
qualitatively different in terms of actual governance.
The ongoing crisis in Gujarat suggests that there is
still scope forseepticism on this count. To take full
advantage of the opportunities presented by the fractured
mandate of 1996, the BJP has to evolve further. In
Bhopal, it has made half a beginning.
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