Gujarat Verdict – And The Loser Is…

Ohh God, it’s finally over; and over as expected. As per few of those who make wild guesses and beat around the bush most of the times and yet call themselves as pollsters, Narendra Modi won the Gujarat mandate for the third time in a row. Well, terming this victory as simple win will be an understatement since it is just about the number that fits to the word ‘landslide’ in political jargons. You must have seen this on TV with most of you might have suppressed your urge for even a loo visit in exchange of some interesting developments at the counting centers and annoying counting coverage in many news channels. Hence, I am not here to tell how Modi won this challenge or how his detractors had to bite the dust yet again. It was bound to happen and all of us knew that from the day our election commission declared the two phase dates for Gujarat polls. So regarding Modi’s spectacular win, Err.. landslide, there isn’t much to write.

Whether Modi really improved his tally of 2007 or not could be sliced and diced depending on which side of the fence you are. Nonsense like delimitation, vote share, his own margin of victory in Maninagar, loss at Sanand because Rahul Gandhi campaigned there and many such could be piled on and on till we reach the election days of 2017; but let’s keep that aside for the Congress manipulators to do for next five years. In any whichever way, the winner in the race is obvious but against whom he won? This is the question for which I am articulating my answer. For many it is Congress but not for me. I mean, certainly Congress is again a loser hear but not the biggest among the lot. For me the real loser is the advisory committee that handled and advised the poll strategy to the queen. More than Congress or their so called star campaigners, it is this committee that lost the election, that too very, very badly at that.

I am saying this for a year and half now. Had the Congress leaders were little less arrogant; they wouldn’t have found themselves in such a precarious situation they are in. State after state, the party is getting routed very unceremoniously. A party which is ruling at the center has got a very volatile presence in the states. Other than Maharashtra (which even is a joint venture with NCP for loot), the party’s presence is very perilous elsewhere. What does that mean? Yes, slowly but surely the grand old party is sliding on a slippery slope to some virtual elimination very soon. And I blame arrogance of the senior party members post the victory with 200 odd seats in 2009 for this. Arrogance certainly makes one complaisant which in turn affects one’s decision making. This is what we are seeing with Congress for some time. Be it their arrogance in UP where they thought the prince is enough to throw out the regional leaders or the haughtiness shown to Mamata Banarjee, where they were all but negligible in the coalition; they had their ego all over the place. Taking for granted is another thing that has hurt the party interest very badly.

They took the UP voters for granted; they took Gujarat Muslims for granted; they even took all state machinery for granted and now what we see is eggs after eggs on the face for such conceit. Do you think they would have learnt something after this latest rebuffing? Well, your guess is as good as mine; once you look at this tweet (which I quoted) describing Chidambaram’s brilliance in analyzing the end result. Congress is a clear winner in Gujarat and so as Pigs can fly. Please do spare an hour for laughing, before you decide to move to the next paragraph.

So coming back after a laugh break; when first it was announced, Rahul Gandhi would be nowhere near the campaign trail; I thought them to have learnt from the bitter experience of UP. But little did I know they have only left Rahul to cool his heels, not the entire attitude.

Once a party goes into an election, more so when the fight is against an incumbent government, the success largely depends on the agendas on which one wants to fight the battle. If there are no agendas readily available, agendas need to be carved out and that is what precisely the job of the strategy committee is. Unfortunate but politics is the only place where you will look cleaner if you point out the mud in your opponents. This is where the think tanks of Congress failed miserably. I don’t blame them here since there aren’t many agendas that could have been carved out to attack Modi. But that no way suggests you come up with accusations that are laughable to say the least. You can fool people on technicality but can you do the same when things are right there for all to see and feel? Sonia Gandhi standing tall and questioning the development of the state, without blinking her eyes was bound to boomerang. When people can see the development right in front of them and can feel the change in their gut, someone spewing blatant lies will look like more of a vested agenda than concern for the citizens. And thankfully Gujarat voters are educated enough to see the lie conveniently wrapped under the emotional family politics. Hence Crocodile tears are spotted and dealt with rejection at once. 

Second blunder that I see within Congress rank is pitting someone like Sweta Bhatt against Narendra Modi from Maninagar. Hope, you don’t need much time to laugh at this choice for starters. This showed how clueless the party was to fight against Modi; so much so that they didn’t had anyone but a novice in the form of a controversial police officer’s wife. Or hang on; is it that no one at Congress was daring to fight against Modi was the reason they had to bank upon a woman to do the face saver act? Since the day Sanjeev Bhatt started that so called spilling the beans of Modi, a lot of water has flown under, in the form of punches and counter punches. Sanjeev Bhatt is openly blamed by BJP for having alleged close door dealings with Congress to malign Modi’s image and his expose are nothing but a henious attempt at bring back the ghost of 2002 riots to the context again. A well planned out political gimmick. He even was squarely termed as a Congress stooge by none other than Modi himself and accused him of manufacturing stories in exchange of returns from Congress. Haven’t you heard of that Blackberry nonsense? Ohh, surely you must have. Honestly, I wasn’t entirely discarding Sanjeev Bhatt’s claims. I am sure, there would be many like me. For the first time I found an explanation of Narendra Modi which didn’t sound that convincing. Now by pitting Sanjeev Bhatt’s wife against Modi, Congress only affirmed the claims of BJP. The situation that was looking negative for Modi suddenly turned themselves at Congress party and yet again displayed their dirty and manipulative politics. So another epic blunder that made people sitting on the fence to jump in and join Modi wagon because they felt Congress is only good at playing nasty jingoisms.

Keshubhai Patel is another classic. From nowhere a new party was born. The attempt at doing another MNS and another Maharashtra in Gujarat seems to have backfired very badly for Congress. Dumb souls who advised such a strategy need to be interrogated with all sorts of third degree methodology for explanations. Here the thing that went wrong is; more than the party BJP it was fight with a person called Modi. Once Keshubhai detached himself from BJP, he automatically became an opposition to Modi. So unlike MNS where non-congress but pro-bjp/sivsena voters voted for the new party, here Keshubhai never could establish that chord. So while he was designed to sabotage BJP votes he ended up as a Frankenstein and ate into Congress vote; since that’s only where he could make inroads as all other routes were blocked by Modi magic. Anyone who has slightest of knowledge about Gujarat politics wouldn’t have made such hara-kiri. But Congress certainly did and I don’t get astonished for such foolishness as it is expected of sycophants. Hope in time to come we will get to know the brilliant mind behind such a profligate idea.

And the supporters of Congress; well I am kind of speechless. On a conservative estimate, for this precarious situation of Congress, I would attribute a good 20% to an equally arrogant and clueless supporters lot. Look at this tweet which might look funny but shows how like Chidambaram most of the Congress supporters don’t carry something called humility and brain. This guy did something brilliantly extraordinary to come up with his own theorem on how geography with a little support from geometry could be related to politics. According to the genius, Modi has won far lesser seats than 2007 according to his path breaking theorem. And how is that? For the explanation he has some absurd votes/seats per square inch of Gujarat land area readily available. Want another break for a hefty laugh?

Poor Vikram Chandra can try his best to teach some humility through his tweets but sure it would have as much impact on the arrogant Congress lot as teachings of Bhagwat Geeta on me. He expects humility from the Congress leaders to accept Modi’s achievements without throwing tantrums. A big, big expectation I would say since they have managed to win 200 odd seats during 2009 and therefore they are the only ones who are not only elected but also electable. According to Congress, Modi, even though is a far superior leader than all of them put together can still be rediculed because he is Narendra Modi not Narendra Gandhi.

That said, I still feel these guys should and will learn from this Gujarat humiliation. If UP was a warning, this result could very well be the first major blow. It all depends if they want to downplay this mischievously as they always do or see the beginning of the end and do something in a hurry to resurrect themselves.