After the BJP electoral juggernaut had decimated the entire opposition in the 2017 UP elections, a former scion of a Congress family in the state, who had also served as a minister in the UPA II regime, made a candid admission to me during an informal conversation.
Making an example of himself and his Modern School upbringing in Lutyens Delhi, he said the Congress leadership cannot compete with the 24X7 politics and energy levels of PM Narendra Modi and then party president Amit Shah. The leader since then has joined the BJP and is now a senior leader of the party in UP.
The 2022 UP Assembly results, where the state has repeated a leader after 37 years is no mean achievement but a result of a constantly working well-oiled election machinery of BJP under the leadership of workaholic Narendra Modi. The BJP’s decisive successive victories in UP, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur indicate that the voter is happy with the good governance and security model of the party and has poured water on those who believed that Congress was coming back to power in Goa and UK due to the anti-incumbency factor against the BJP state governments.
The results have shown a pro-incumbency factor with voting percentages going up in favour of BJP. The big bonus of the verdict is that BJP now has four more leaders led by indefatigable Yogi Adityanath in all four corners of the country. The Manipur victory reveals that the party’s grip is tightening over India’s northeast, most neglected by the past regimes, under the leadership of an Amit Shah clone and present Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Unlike the Congress which has part-time leaders and believes that Twitter can replace work on the ground by party cadres, the BJP leadership is simply outrunning the opposition with humongous energy, incisive politics and clear-cut objectives which are synergized with the growth and objectives of India. Party leaders like Modi, Shah, J.P. Nadda and Yogi Adityanath do not allow national media to exercise veto over their policies and seek the fourth state or social media only for propagation of the party vision. The party exercises discipline with hardly anyone speaking out of turn and gives up on those leaders who don’t get this message from the top.
While many in the party quietly complain that the top leadership does not have time for them, fact is that leaders like Modi, Shah, Nadda and Yogi are working round the clock for either the country or the party. There are no holidays or chill zones, only traditional Indian sweet dishes or icecreams are rewards. Those who work with Union home minister Amit Shah find his schedules back breaking with meals on the go and ridiculous sleep hours. The home minister has not stepped out of the country since he assumed charge at the North Block in 2019. But even Shah is a number two to the punishing schedule of PM Modi with Yogi and Nadda adding to the race of workaholics.
With Modi and Shah setting personal examples, the work culture of the party and government is such that everyone must pitch in at the required moment with strict penalty to those who pfaff or do not deliver. And this regime is followed religiously from “pana pramukh or ground worker in a locality” to the party president to the PM.
The work ethics in BJP are now in sharp contrast to the Congress, which is now in a disarray due to weak and indifferent leadership. The party will find it extremely hard to retain Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections in 2023 if the Congress leadership does not take charge. Congress is just a junior partner in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Tamil Nadu state governments. The rise of the AAP party first in Delhi and now in Punjab clearly shows the diversion of Congress votes to the new party, which will now be competing for the main opposition space by trying to spread its wings all over the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit the nail on its head on Thursday evening at BJP Headquarters when he predicted the demise of dynastic politics in future. Now work matters, family is incidental.