Lesson for Gujarat victor: Shun confrontation

Unless a miracle happens — and miracles do take place in elections — Narendra Modi will be back as Gujarat’s chief minister after the people’s verdict is known next Sunday. To the many factors favouring a BJP victory, the Congress has added one more during the election campaign: it has transformed a state Assembly poll into a Narendra Modi vs. Sonia Gandhi contest. She was ill-advised to introduce that highly provocative pitch to her party’s attack on Modi, which could have had only one effect: forcing the BJP’s traditional support base to overcome its internal dissensions and work for the party’s victory.

The Congress president was ably assisted in this by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has strangely emerged as the Congress party’s No 2 poll campaigner. That he is not cut out for this job was evident when he exposed his political naïvete by making remarks that either helped the chief minister to counterattack (“We’ll reopen the riot cases”) or conceded Modi’s victory (“BJP has made Advani its prime ministerial candidate because it fears Modi”). Incredibly, he even charged that an atmosphere of fear and Terror prevails in Gujarat. It prompted me to take a magnifying glass to read the newspapers all over again to see if, during the first phase of polling on December 11, there was a single case of booth-capturing, rigging, poll violence, or coercive attempts to stop Muslims or any other section of the population from coming to the polling booth. I couldn’t see any. I also cross-checked from various sources: How many terrorist incidents had occurred in Gujarat in the past five years? Practically none.

There is no need to fast-forward the analysis of elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. There will be plenty of it after December 23. However, two things can be said with certainty. Firstly, the train of political developments will not be running on a slow track after India enters 2008. It will, of course, run superfast, causing derailment of the UPA government, if the prime minister chooses to defy Comrade Karat’s December-end ultimatum on the Indo-US nuclear deal. On the other hand, if he heeds Karat’s threat and decides to jettison the deal in order to prolong the life of his Government — which is a distinct possibility — he will remain a prime minister with near-zero credibility and authority.

Secondly, the viciously confrontationist campaign in Gujarat has made a lot of people on both sides of the political divide worry about the shape of things to come in the parliamentary elections. Should an electoral contest be reduced simply to attacks and counter-attacks? Shouldn’t there be moderation and reasoned debates in the campaign? And should the media highlight only aggression and high-decibel diatribe? Doesn’t it force campaigners to think that they should speak only such things, and in such a combative manner, as will be picked up by TV cameras? Is the cult of personality, be it in the Congress or BJP, good for the development of a healthy and robust democracy?

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