BJP’s angst

The BJP is sinking deeper into the post-debacle depression. Those insiders voicing criticism and concern about the party and its follies that led to the defeat and what should be done are only pushing it deeper into depths of despair and self-doubt.

The party is finding it difficult to take defeat in its stride and move on into the future. The disturbing fact is that the party has been suffering from the blues since its 2004 electoral setback. Then it took the party and its leaders a long time to even admit that it had lost; they thought it was a bad dream that would simply go away. They wasted five years in a confrontationist mode, trying to bring down the UPA government instead of planning a new, fresh strategy.

When defeat hit it again in 2009, the party was left staggered and dazed by the knock-out punch. Since then some insiders have slowly begun airing views on what mistakes were made and what needs to be done and this has set off a storm.

A senior leader like Jaswant Singh has said in an interview that the BJP has to be a party of the present and not of yesterdays. Another has criticised the RSS for projecting Advani as a weak leader. Some want it to modernise and remove the perception that the party is anti-minority. At the very least, the party must do a makeover seems to be the general consensus, except that the current leadership seems incapable of dealing with that basic truth.

Party president Rajnath Singh just does not seem to be in a position to rally the scattered forces in the organisation. He is at odds with his peer group, all of whom consider him to be a nonentity. He does not command the respect from his colleagues which is needed to keep things under control.

Party veteran and leader in Lok Sabha LK Advani is not in a position to chart a course out of the present debris into the future either, since his leadership is clearly damaged and his era is coming to an end.

This state of affairs cannot go on. Some hard decisions are called for, which will require honesty and accountability in all internal assessments. Setting up secret internal committees is the wrong way to go. For a party that is still in power in many states, this loss of confidence is mystifying and self-defeating.