Kingmaker plays
his game once again
Amit Shah could
not be a king. But he played the role of kingmaker efficiently. He refused to
accept the post of Gujarat Chief Minister since it would be a demotion for him.
The post of national president of Bharatiya Janata Party was more prestigious.
Then he did the next best thing. He handpicked
his own man to head the government in Gujarat. This was an indication of the
clout he wielded at all levels in the party, and the influence he has on Prime
Minister Narendra Modi even with regard to decisions relating to Gujarat, their
home State. Shah wanted the government
helmed by someone he could count on to implement his ground-level political
strategy. Anandiben Patel was Mr.
Modi’s choice. But the things did not turn out well for the BJP
government in Gujarat under her and this compelled Modi to allow Shah a free
hand. Ms. Patel did not step down voluntarily. The circumstances and pressure
from the Modi-Shah duo created a situation where she had no other option but to
resign.
Anandiben Patel’s
handling of reservation issue prove to be her waterloo. Reservation should be
given to only those people of backward class, who are still leading a miserable
life and government should not compromise with that. But there are people from
backward classes who are now leading an affluent life and still enjoying the
benefits of Reservation which is wrong. Since Anandiben Patel had mismanaged
the state to a intubation where it lurched from one crisis to the next is the
naturally an atmosphere where her competency would be called into question. Caste is the single most divisive social evil that besets India in the
21st Century and every step in the direction of making it useless or irrelevant
is a step in the right direction. Parties that use caste have every interest in
perpetuating this evil system.
Rahul is
totally unsuitable either for VP of the Congress party or to be its PM choice,
when he lacks experience as compared to many other stalwarts in the party and
that he does not represent the casteist or communal majority in the party. Yet
he is the top man of Congress Party. Political Parties in India, irrespective
of the party considered (BJP, Congress, TMC, BSP, SP, DMK, AIADMK, Shiv Sena
etc) are either Family/Dynasty centered or Individual-Agenda centered. Congress,
for example, is almost always Nehru family centered (although Jawaharlal
Nehru's Socialist development agenda is never its policy); the BJP, currently,
is Modi-Amit Shah centered; the TMC in Bengal is Mamta Banerjee centered; DMK
is Karunaninidhi centered - etc. Such central-controlled, personality agenda
driven systems can never bring out the best, and instead, almost always only
mediocre and less than mediocre people are brought to center stage so that the
Top-person/ Group could control and decide what the programs are, and how each
party functions. Gujarat is no exception - and Mod's experiment with the
ordinary Ms Anandiben, having failed miserably (in a highly complex Governance
realities), the turn now is that of Amit Shah. Efficiency of Governance would
be retrograde any way
Of course the
replacement of Ms Ben with Vijay Rupani shows the domination that Shah plays in
BJP. He selected his own ally Rupani to prove himself as a King maker and to
gently push off the demotion to CM level while holding the precious crown of
holding the Party Presidentship. But the core fact is that Rupani has no power
to lessen the bitter taste caused by mishandling of Patidar agitation and the
failure of Modi model governance. Nearing assembly election contraints the duos
Shah and Modi need to look into the declining electoral shine of BJP and to do
something to retrack the derailed party on key causes.
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