If Delhi was a blackout which hit BJP suddenly, Bihar was a catastrophe waiting to happen. The party incoherent in strategy, capitulated in front of the RJD-JD(U) alliance. From the beginning, the party was always unsure about what strategy to employ to win the elections. From the development pitch with a generous dole in the beginning, to playing covertly communal politics in the end, and the BJP party president himself saying that Diwali would be celebrated in Pakistan if the results went in favour of the Mahagathbandhan, showed the muzzled strategy of the saffron outfit. In the whole election, BJP fumbled to get any cogent defence against Nitish Kumar's charm offensive.
This suddenly puts the spotlight unkindly on PM Modi's Man Friday Amit Shah. Shah was widely hailed for being the brain behind BJP's fantastic win in the Lok Sabha election. Piles of newsreels were spent on describing how Shah was the cogent backroom boy who managed to get all the cogs in the wheels in place for smooth functioning in the elections. Then came Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. BJP propelled by the Modi wave formed the government on its own in Haryana, became part of the government for the first time in J&K and also managed to become the senior partner ahead of Shiv Sena enroute to winning the polls in Maharashtra. Amit Shah was hailed as a master strategist, who could literally get nothing wrong.
But sadly for the BJP, the man from Gujarat then lost his Midas touch in two consecutive elections. First, the humiliating drubbing in Delhi and now this defeat in Bihar is unlikely to be forgotten any time soon by the top BJP brass or RSS for that matter. In both the states, BJP had no answer to counter powerful regional satraps who were chosen over Modi's charismatic appeal, to get five years to change the face of the state.
In Delhi, Amit Shah clearly did a harakiri by drafting in Kiran Bedi at the 11th hour, clearly an afterthought to blunt Kejriwal's offensive. The party bombed poorly. In Bihar, sensing that the game was slipping away from his hand, Amit Shah resorted to blatant communalism by saying that "Diwali would be celebrated in Pakistan if BJP loses". All this shows the Gujarat strongman's lack of trust with local leaders. The entire set up is top-down, centralised in Delhi. BJP wanted to become a party with a difference by creating a model different from that of Congress, by empowering leaders in different states. Modi himself is a product of that model. But Amit Shah clearly believes in ruling with an iron fist, calling the shots from the capital.
In political battle, one is as good as the last win. Amit Shah's strategies would probably have been hailed as a masterstroke if they had worked. But they clearly haven't and now questions will be raised if he needs to use the reset button. Merely glitzy campaign and reaching out to voters through the ground level workers may not work in every state, especially where the electorate is looking for a personality cult. The Modi wave in limited form will continue to work where the opposition doesn't have any credible faces. But in states like Assam and West Bengal, it needs to project a leader, empower and trust them. Can Amit Shah be the talisman who can get a free-falling BJP on the track? To cement his place in the pantheons of BJP greats, he must come up with a different strategy, else RSS' unkind cut may not be too far.
