“After me, the deluge”, Louis XV of France had once famously predicted. The same holds true for regional parties across India in the wake of the defeat of Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi after a fierce fight — if they fail to reinvent, reorient and revive.
The BJP’s hat trick in Delhi after securing victories in Maharashtra and Haryana has turned the world’s largest party into a bugbear for its detractors, especially the regional parties, which are not on a strong wicket.
This is notwithstanding the fact that Congress Party remains the favourite punching bag of the Prime Minister, who has time and again openly advocated the controversial campaign of a “Congress-mukt Bharat”. But that is another story.
The fact is that the regional parties have neither the stamina nor the strength or the character to survive in a sustained fight given their present condition.
Go no further than Maharashtra. The state offers a perfect example of how an underdog BJP after the Lok Sabha elections has made mincemeat of the once powerful Maha Vikas Aghadi in the Assembly polls a few months ago. This is despite the charges levelled by the Congress, Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction that the BJP had played foul in the polls.
Arvind Kejriwal may have been the slippery character of Indian politics, but he was a hard-nosed strategist and an effective orator and organiser who brought a new grammar to politics in the national capital with his trademark welfare politics. He might be authoritarian in nature, but he had full hold over his party and politics, unlike most other regional leaders.
Both the BJP and the Congress were forced to follow the Kejriwal model in Delhi, which is a reflection of the fact that the model is going to stay, overtly or covertly.
The BJP’s strategy aimed at tearing apart the AAP is visible with the ruling party seeking to make deep inroads in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, controlled by Mr Kejriwal, by hook or crook.
The defeat in Delhi will undoubtedly cast a dark shadow over AAP-ruled Punjab sooner than later.
“What goes up has to come down” — aptly applies in the case of Mr Kejriwal and his party due to the fact that in the fast lane to glamour and power, he made many detractors within and outside.
But what is also certain is that the Delhi Assembly outcome is a wake-up call for regional parties aspiring to play kingmaker in national politics. If Mr Kejriwal can fall despite being seen as the smartest of the lot, the rest are likely to be far more vulnerable. This is because the BJP’s next target will be the beleaguered regional parties bedevilled by internal conflicts.
Not a single regional party is in good shape, and nor did they learn much from the emergence of the BJP as the world’s largest party and its wicked ways.
Even worse is that the leadership of most of the regional parties has not come up by the dint of their hard work. They are the dynasts who are enjoying power and position because of the legacy left by their father or uncle. Instead of actually being regional parties, rooted in the causes of their regions, they have evolved into “family” parties.
Take the instance of Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav. At least half a dozen of his near relatives are either MPs or MLAs, and some of them are his close advisers. Some have even joined the BJP in search of greener pastures.
The case of Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar is not all that different. Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi is the state’s deputy chief minister, while J&K CM Omar Abdullah is the son of National Conference president Farooq Abdullah.
Jagan Mohan Reddy, Sukhbir Singh Badal, HD Kumarswamy, Uddhav and Raj Thackere, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Chirag Paswan, Hemant Soren, Ajit Pawar and Jayant Chaudhary ARENJRANT CHAUDHARING ORI Have enjoyed power due to dynasty.
Marginalising them is child’s play for the BJP under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. They can either ally with the BJP for their survival or confront it with like-minded parties unitedly. If you align with the BJP, you have to play second fiddle or, worse, become a vassal. There is no other fate.
The Opposition INDIA alliance being in tatters is not a good thing for them, and the tragedy is that they are the prime reasons for the pathetic plight of the bloc. Everyone who is anyone in the INDIA bloc wants the leadership. Right or wrong, an impression is that some of them are playing into the hands of the BJP to embarrass and weaken the Congress.
The impressive victory in Delhi after a hard-fought battle has put the BJP in the driver’s seat, which will force its friends and foes to pause and reflect on the way ahead.
In poll-bound Bihar, neither chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) nor any other NDA allies can afford to be taciturn.
With Assembly polls in five states due next year, the regional parties will have to be extra cautious. It is introspection time for the regional parties at a time when, next year, Mamata Banerjee is seeking a fourth term in West Bengal and the Left is hoping to come to power for the third time in Kerala. Assembly polls are also due in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and BJP-ruled Assam. None of them have pro-incumbency.
The problem is that none of the regional parties have realised the clear and present danger when every single day counts. The disarray in the Opposition camp is not a good augury. The anti-BJP forces must realise that “we must all hang together, or we will all hang separately”.
The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi
