As a party, the BJP today has more internal democracy than any other — certainly more than the CPM in the light of the recent happenings there. It is also a party that believes in introspecting and holding chintan-baithaks. Advani has a sharp, sharp political mind and if he were to assert his authority — which he hasn’t done lately — he would need to call some people to account. In fact, it will be almost his entire A-team. His political managers completely failed to keep his numbers together, or to even explain his nuanced opposition on the nuclear deal. You talk to the BJP workers, sympathisers as you travel along the country, and they all want to know why their party is opposing the nuclear deal. In any case, what is it doing in cahoots with the Left? Why is it in such a hurry for an election when the Congress may indeed benefit from the anti-incumbency that some of the BJP state governments (Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh) face in November? Why not allow this “half-dead” UPA government to drag along for another six months while inflation rises?

His party’s think tank got carried away. Or maybe there was an element of revenge there: the Congress helped vote out our government twice, in 1996 and 1999; it was about time we paid them back. Either way, they played poor politics and Advani cannot absolve himself of the blame. Yes, he has problems. His party president does not know who he is, why he is where he is, and what he is supposed to do and how. At least on the nuclear deal his instincts were right but nobody would listen to him. With no core leadership in control, the party elders manipulate the politics of his state leaders — who actually bring both the votes and the bucks — even more cynically than the Congress’s Rajya Sabha-ist durbaris do. His chief ministers are alienated. It is well-known that most of his party’s central leadership would have been happy to see Modi lose. And Vasundhara? She may have succeeded in putting down the revolt within her unit, but what is she to do with the venerables in her own high command who play Henry Kissinger in the morning and James Bond in the evening, but would do their damnedest to make her life impossible? It is this anarchy at the top, and alienation at state levels, combined with the intellectual blunder of going against its grain by building its case against the nuclear deal, that explains the current state of the party, its leader and the coalition they lead.

... contd.