(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)
While the BJP's defeat in the Delhi state election has been total and absolute, it is necessary to put things in perspective. Those who are pretending the battle-lines and possible verdict of the 2019 Lok Sabha election can now almost be predicted are surely getting carried away. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Arvind Kejriwal have certainly raised their profile, but to posit them as the key all-India challenge to the BJP and Narendra Modi in 2019 is premature. It may well happen, but frankly, so may several other alternative scenarios.
More to the point, this election has ended the BJP government's honeymoon and the party's dream run of victories going back the state polls of December 2013. In that sense, for the Modi-era BJP, it is the end of the beginning. That does not make it, and it would be silly to interpret it as, the beginning of the end.
In politics as in war, a period of heady conquest and territorial expansion needs to be followed by consolidation. In the case of the BJP, this period of consolidation has been forced upon it by the scale of the loss in Delhi. Even so, if the lessons are learnt, and the gains of the past 15 months are assessed and nurtured, then the party can only benefit. Of course, much will depend on what Narendra Modi, as Prime Minister, and Amit Shah, as party President, do.
Since December 2015, ((2013)) when the BJP won a third term in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, and secured its most comprehensive victory in an assembly election in Rajasthan, the party has grown and grown. It won a majority in the Lok Sabha election, finished first in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, and was given an enormous mandate by voters in Jammu. In the coming days, it is likely to be part of the government in Srinagar.
In the near future, the assembly election in Bihar will boil down to a battle between Laloo Yadav and the Yadav-Muslim alliance - with Nitish Kumar fronting for it - and the BJP. This is not going to be an easy election, but the fact remains that the BJP has its best chance ever. A strategic and well thought out campaign, planned over months, since the BJP has a Chief Ministerial candidate in place, is necessary. In Assam, as the recent municipal elections suggest, the social coalition that served the BJP in the Lok Sabha election is holding, and with luck the party could win a majority in the assembly when elections are held there next year.
In West Bengal, it will be difficult to dislodge the Trinamool Congress, but a strong second finish for the BJP, one that pulls it well ahead of the CPI(M), is very feasible. This would have been out of question even a year ago. Punjab, where the Akali Dal-BJP alliance faces severe anti-incumbency, looks tough. Yet, a divided Congress and the entry of AAP, which can potentially cut into votes of all three rival parties, offers both a threat and an opportunity. Finally, there is Uttar Pradesh, where, to this writer's mind at least, Mayawati and the BSP will compete with the BJP for pretty much the same swing voter.
If one compares this scenario with November 2013, before the quintet of assembly elections that winter, how is the BJP placed? Then, as now, in key states, primarily Uttar Pradesh, its organisational structure remains weak and bereft of compelling local leaders. Then, as now in Delhi, it is an also-ran with a state unit that is a sorry mess, incapable of winning an assembly election since 1993. Having said that, compared to November 2013, the BJP is in power in many more states and will be running the Union government for the next four years. These are not achievements and assets to be sneezed at.
Much (though not all) of this increment has come because the Modi surge overrode organisational infirmities. After Delhi, those organisational infirmities will need to be addressed. Bihar will be a very local election, with caste-by-caste, constituency-by-constituency calculations. Uttar Pradesh cannot be won by the BJP state party as it is, not even if Modi addresses two dozen meetings.
The next Delhi BJP leader (whoever the person is) is in his or her late 30s or early 40s. To identify this person and place this generation in charge of an overhauled and contemporary party, one that has enough time to rebuild itself for 2020 without resorting to wildcard entries, are all tasks that await Amit Shah. In 2014-15, he had only a few months to turn around the Delhi unit and he failed. Now, he has a few years.
For Modi, in government, the adversities are of another order. For the past few months, the BJP as a political animal as well as key talent in the government - including the Prime Minister - have lived from election to election, pulled away much too often. Inevitably, this has led to an atmosphere of heightened rhetoric and bitter contestation. For instance, the imperatives of a party that is growing in Bengal, and the imperatives of a government that could do with a degree of cooperation by the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha, have to find a happy mean. When a party is in whirlwind campaign mode, this is not easy.
All this has told on the government's legislative business, which has been stalled in the Rajya Sabha, and where relations with non-Congress parties such as the AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress and the BJD have not gone as smoothly as was perhaps expected in May 2014. Of course, there is also the likelihood that after Delhi, the opposition will be even more hostile in the Budget Session. Having said that, the long Budget Session is also usually the session where a lot of serious legislation is done.
Now, with the frenetic series of elections behind him, Modi needs to focus on making the Budget and the Budget Session a success. That is non-negotiable. If he achieves it, he will regain much of the political capital lost on February 10, and will win space too for him and Shah to take hard decisions within the party. As the old movie line goes, "Picture abhi baaki hai".
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