As somebody rightly said, “it is more important to say ‘perfect’ things ‘imperfectly’ than to say ‘imperfect’ things ‘perfectly’. Similarly, at times poll managers like event managers matter more than even the party’s ideology. The role of poll managers was of prime importance in the wake of Bihar assembly elections and 2014 general elections. In both cases, at the centre was Prashant Kishore, a star poll manager.
Prashant Kishore with a team of youths trained in management and IT skills contributed immensely towards creating ‘Brand Modi’ in the last Lok Sabha elections. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was quick to get the message and roped in Prashant Kishore for state elections. The rest, as they say, is history. Kishore was successful in achieving a very difficult task of demolishing the ‘Brand Modi’ in Bihar which he himself had helped create at the national-level.
This led to a widespread perception particularly in political circles that poll managers cannot only be a substitute for party ideologues and party strategists but also can do the job better than them. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee too has reportedly sought the help of Kishore for the coming West Bengal elections. However, one cannot forget that the victory of BJP and Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha elections was largely due to bad performance of UPA government, policy paralysis and a slew of scams.
Whereas, a close examination of the just concluded Bihar elections reveals that the outcome was largely determined by the national developments in last one and a half years and the progress made by Nitish Kumar-led government in the last ten years. Unfortunately, BJP and Mr Modi deliberately gave Bihar elections a national context. Mr Modi and BJP president campaigned extensively in Bihar. They and other Union ministers made it look like a national election fought in a state. Naturally the focus shifted from the performance of the state government to the performance of the central government, which did not have much to flaunt.
To top it, the Dadri lynching incident brought to the fore the growing anger which was already there because of the killing of rationalists Dabholkar, Pansare and writer Kalburgi against rising intolerance and cult of violence in the country for which BJP and Sangh Pariwar were held responsible. The silence of Mr Modi even after return of awards by writers and artists was seen as his approval for the same. This worked against BJP and NDA in Bihar.
The positive contributions of Nitish Kumar government in the field of economic and social development, particularly for women worked to the advantage of Grand Secular Alliance. The rest was achieved through working out right caste equations by Grand Alliance. Lalu Prasad Yadav’s MY (Muslim–Yadav) equation worked and provided the core support to the Grand Secular Alliance.
While all this worked in Alliance’s favour, the impact of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat statement of reservation too can not be overlooked. The Grand Secular Alliance took full advantage of this statement and projected NDA to be the enemy of SCs, STs, Backward Castes and EBCs. The clarification offered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah clearly did not work.
(The writer is a former Principal of Patna College and former Dean faculty of Social Sciences)
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