This Article is From Mar 24, 2014

Op-ed: What BJP's Pramod Muthalik encounter proves

(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)

Just what did BJP leader Arun Jaitley mean when he said the party's Karnataka unit "didn't realise that India has changed" as it inducted Pramod Muthalik? Was he arguing those in the state unit who had brought in Muthalik, the infamous boss figure of the Sri Ram Sena, were impervious to the election campaign that Narendra Modi was running and wilfully sabotaging it?

On the other hand, was Jaitley berating the Karnataka unit for not understanding that in the age of 24/7 media, no politics and no political deal could stay local? The charitable - if that word can be used at all - explanation for Muthalik's entry into the BJP was that Prahlad Joshi, Karnataka BJP chief, was mollifying a potential spoiler in Hubli. Joshi is the BJP nominee from the constituency and Muthalik was threatening to stand as an independent.

For their reasons, Joshi and his colleagues decided to ignore the impact winning that one seat (Hubli) could have had on several urban constituencies across India. Elsewhere the Muthalik issue would have given the BJP's opponents an issue on a platter. Images and memories of Muthalik and his thugs molesting women and attacking pubs would have come back into circulation. At the very least, that Muthalik and his group are widely regarded as all-purpose goons for hire would have embarrassed the party.

So is India less accepting of such muscle flexing and is that how it has changed? There is half a point here in that as urban,middle-class societies emerge and grow, they are less tolerant of direct action and vigilantism. However, it is not as if the average Indian would have cheered and applauded Muthalik say 30 years ago. In that respect, middle Indian decency was never supportive of Muthalik's ways.

What has actually changed - and this is at the heart of the matter as well as the burden of Jaitley's contention - is the influence news television has on politics and on the conversion of what would hitherto have been small-scale provincial controversies into national causes. The BJP experienced it in 2009 when a Varun Gandhi speech at a relatively minor public meeting in Uttar Pradesh went viral thanks to television. On Sunday, March 23, if Muthalik had not been sacked within hours of being recruited, a repeat was on the cards.

Television has made it very difficult to geographically contain political phenomena. It has enhanced the challenge that national parties face in taking a decision that may appear to be practical and pragmatic in a state or constituency but could have a negative impact in other parts of the country. To Prahlad Joshi, Muthalik's 20,000 or 30,000 votes in Hubli were crucial. To BJP functionaries from Goa to Delhi, Muthalik seemed the kiss of death.

This tension - between local imperative and national impact - is not limited to the BJP. While the assessment of Muthalik was easy and straightforward - the man and his record don't allow for any shades of grey - other examples could be less, well, in-your-face. Take the Congress and Chandigarh. Pawan Bansal presided over a scandal-prone Railway Ministry andhis nephew was incriminated in a bribery sting. Bansal escaped because investigators gave him the benefit of the doubt. Yet, the perception about him was formed.

In Chandigarh, however, Bansal remains a formidable constituency MP. The Congress persisted with him because he was the party candidate most likely to win, even though high-profile ministers were jockeying for his seat. Of course, it helped that there were no tell-tale audio-visual clips of Bansal, as there were of Muthalik and his Sena! Even so, the larger question of what to do with a controversial candidate, a dubious strongman MP or a sleazy political fixer who brings in incremental votes remains.

News television has made tolerance of such characters - and the ability to incorporate them in national parties - that much more difficult, though not entirely impossible.

Finally, there is the next incarnation of political communication - social media. If it hadn't been for the uproar on Twitter would the BJP have been as responsive as it was and sacked Muthalik even before he had digested his membership laddoo? To this degree at least, new-age media wasn't a challenge for the BJP - but a saviour.

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