There can be no denying the BJP has wrested the psychological advantage about four years after the 2004 General Election debacle. The swagger is back and this time with a four letter word to reinforce it if this report by the TOI is anything to go by:
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi virtually set the agenda at the BJP national council on Monday, mounting a frontal attack on the Manmohan Singh government over “communal” budgeting in development programmes and a “lack of seriousness” in tackling threats to national security.? The saffron strongman confirmed his standing with the BJP rank and file as some 4,000-odd delegates listened to Modi outline a sharp political critique of the UPA.
As he rolled out a chargesheet against the UPA, Modi peppered his speech with ringing praise for Leader of Opposition L K Advani whose projection as prime ministerial nominee he repeatedly endorsed.
While praising the BJP for getting into election mode instantly Swapan Dasgupta writing in The Pioneer on sunday also lamented on the need for defining brand Advani.
The BJP cannot proceed on the assumption that Advani is a pre-sold commodity or a known brand. Brand Advani 1990 is not Brand Advani 2008. The country knew what he represented 18 years ago. It needs to be told where he stands today.
It is understandable why Mr. Dasgupta would want Brand Advani to be defined for after all the mainstream media, particularly the english media and 24×7 news channels ,?have a track record of negative branding of the BJP and its leaders.These channels also have a history of attempting to prop up brand Sonia? and brand Rahul while preserving brand Manmohan’s teflon skinned conscience.
While Mr. Dasgupta may be right in this assessment that the country at large may not know what Brand Advani means, he is perhaps overstating the significance of a national brand. The Modi victory in Gujarat has shattered many myths about the media’s power to make and unmake brands and the media’s ability to influence electoral outcomes. In fact more than a branding of Modi in the media it was the framing of the public debate around the no-nonsense persona of Modi and his “I mean business” record that made the difference in Gujarat.
So should the BJP frame its campaign around Mr. Advani’s persona in the run up to the next general election ?
While we have seen how fruitless a national brand like Sonia has been in delivering electoral dividends to the Congress we have also seen the limitations of a hyping up the promise of brand Rahul without?a record to show.
Both of these media machinations are good reasons for the BJP to not go overboard in attempting to building new equity of brand Advani.
Offstumped Bottomline: The outcome of the next general election will invariably be determined by the sum of all local incumbencies and mutinies especially given how distant and far removed the Union Government and Parliamentarians are from directly impacting day to day issues of delivery of public services. While the BJP was succesful in peppering over incumbencies and mutinies in Gujarat this nation has not voted on an overriding national issue in over two decades in a general election. Not even the most horrific of terrorist attacks like the 7-11 train blasts in Mumbai have been effective at either triggering a national backlash or sustaining one beyond the first 48 hours of the incident. There is no escaping the calculus of incumbency for the BJP in a general election.
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Brand Advani will always be tarnished by the Babri Masjid destruction tragedy
history lovers are always stuck in 2002. there is no other page in Indian history except that !!!!!!
BJP should have the advantage of the incumbency at the national level, but the BJP might have the pay the price for misrule in Rajasthan, MP. Maybe they can get their act together under ‘Super CM’ Modi =)
@history_lover
I’m glad you like history, you should read this history of the destruction of thousands of hindu temples in mughal India. Describing Babri destruction a ‘tragedy’ is like the criminals prosecuting the police.
Every hindu should read these books. One will not find this in the marxist version of indian history.
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/htemples1/
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/htemples2/
Gujarat proved that it was immune to the manufactured brands & believed in governence, hence the BJP victory there. The victory was based purely on good governence & Modi’s ability to market this to his state.
But the same may not be true elsewhere, the constant campaining by the media on behalf of the Congress first family may just find enough retention in the public psyche. While it is true this did not affect the recent elections. That doesn’t mean that such a thing should be taken lightly.
It would not hurt the BJP to market it’s agenda, what it stands for & try to reach as many as it can. It must reached the middle class & pursuade it to come out & vote in large numbers. It has to counter the slant & rhetoric being propogated in the media. It tried to sell it’s achievements in 2004, but was not effective, thanks to the negative campaign run against it. The UPA government’s failures must be brought forward effectively. It has failed on several serious issues.
I’m sure, this time around the BJP will use all these learnings & put them to good use.
I think BJP should also take a lead in defining the UPA Government.
Instead of calling UPA Government or Congress Party, all BJP leaders should start calling it Sonia Gandhi’s Government and Sonia Gandhi’s Party. Then talk about all the failure so that people begin to associate failure with Sonia Gandhi. In any case, Sonia Gandhi will be Congree’s main campaigner in upcoming election, lets start attacking already.
UPA is a faceless entity, and it takes an effort on part of people to associate with failure of Sonia Gandhi / Congress. Link Sonia Gandhi with government and every thing that UPA does.
no amount of branding can turn a donkey into a stud horse. advani’s high point came in creating the hindutva political voter in ‘93. it’s been down-hill ever since. witness his totally mediocre performance as home minister or his even more recent bizarro ramblings on jinnah. only way he would be better than madmoron, is that he would not destroy hindu monuments(like ram setu).
on the other hand, the lion of gujarat, would make the perfect pm. imagine the richest state with 55m people growing at a rate comparable to china for the past 7 years. absolutely competent and absolutely honest person who is capable of working 16hours a day for the betterment of the society. the center/right-of-center intelligentsia(including people like shourie) realize not having this guy as pm is as stupid as walking past a crore rupees unattended in the street…
hopefully sense prevails in the sangh parivar and after 6 months of advani as pm(fulfilling his sole life long ambition of having the Kurchi) he is shifted out and modi is made pm.
The Gujrat story on how to beat anti-incuimbency maybe difficult to replicate.
One thing thats definitely do-able even at this late stage in MP and rajasthan is that fire at least half the sitting MLAs. The bottom 50% performers (though what ‘performance’ means in the MLA/MP context, I’m yet to figure out).
Also make sure the visible top leadership is squeaky clean. And no, that’s not a cliche. One reason why Naveen patnaik seems to beat anti-incumbency in Orissa is that common people don’t see him as living off ill gotten public monies.
And three, there’s no substitute to walking the talk. Delivery. Implementation. The ideas are already all there. Its more a case of pushing through projects to completeion and such.
Just my dui taka. Have a nice day, all.
Yossarin, I think 24×7 English non-mainstream media can do lot more damage in the national elections. Of course anti-media could also be high, they they over do it, like they have in Gujarat. More than branding, wise partners in key states will deliver…
Advani looked really old in a recent picture. While he may be PM for 1-2 years, someone else, may be Modi, will have to replace him. Then the fun begins
The BJP also seems to be doing the right thing & leading from the front. In a walk-the-talk instance, it has decided to adopt 500 farmers in the suicide prone Vidharba belt of Maharashtra. The certainly is a good thing to do & shows its seriousness. (UPA for the ‘aam aadmi’?)
See link -
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=219&page=4
On a side note, Tehalka struggles to sell copies -
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=9524336
You can’t sell lies drummed up as truth, right Yossarin?
When Prof Partha Chatterjee, one of the finest political theorist of our time wrote in his seminal essay “Secularism and Tolerance” (way back in 1994 in EPW), “the majoritarianism of the Hindu right, it seems to me, is perfectly at peace with the institutional procedures of the “western” or “modern” state”- most definitely he had Advani in his mind. Vajpayee was luckly to become PM, as Advani IS the undisputable charming price of rising waves of Hindutva.
Sonia Gandhi represents dynastic, dysfunctional Congress. She is enjoying unconstitional power without responsibility. When (say) price of Petrol/disel increases by Rs 3 by UPA, she goes onto overdrive and Petrolium minister cuts the price to Rs 2. People cannot be fooled too long by this.
Advani represents the ‘most mature, formidable’ Hindutva leader, first in last 1000 years of Indian history who has shown what Hindu unity can achieve and changed contours of Indian politics FOREVER. He represents a strong leadership, MODERNIZING INTERVENTONIST and rose based on his sheer ability, NOT BECAUSE OF HIS BIRTH.
While Advani’s leadership is inspirational, Sonia represents dysfunctional Congress and state of the ‘largest democracy’.
Let’s hope BJP finally gets its act together. This country really needs an alternative to the Congress-Left combine.
The Congress could help by flying Rahul Gandhi all over the country
Congress and the gandhi family are the worst things that ever happened to India.
On the other hand BJP needs to get its act together and not just depend on anti incumbency factors to get it into office.
PL go thru the edit page of today’s Daily Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com and read Ashok Malik’s summing up of what the BJP needs to do to win the elections.
I don’t know if the BJP has really got its signals right or is it just the afterglow of the Gujarat elections! Coz even in the 2004 elections, the BJP was in high spirits!
If the BJP doesnt do too well as it is expecting and if the Congress too doesnt perform well enough, then we may be in for another bout of “Third Front” or “National Front” or “United Front” experiment – something which on three occasions in the past has failed with disastrous results! God save us!
Give me a Congress led UPA Govt any day than a one led by Mulayam/ Mayawati/ Karunanidhi/ Ram Vilas Paswan/ Deve Gowda or …. shudder shudder… Prakash KArat!
“These channels also have a history of attempting to prop up brand Sonia and brand Rahul while preserving brand Manmohan’s teflon skinned conscience. ” -
Yossarin, Can’t agree more with you. It was indeed laughable to see the weakest and most ineffective PM in the history of mankind, the toothless and gutless MM Singh, win the ‘Indian Leader of the year’ award, in one of the prominent english news channels’ awards ceremony. Of course the Managing Editor of the same news channel was promptly given a Padma Shri, in a shameless quid pro quo.
Vajpayee has retired, and I think even Advani, though he is reportedly quite healthy and energetic, is nonetheless 80 and has limited innings left in his political career. I think he wants to be PM in his legacy, even if not for a full-term. As far as “Brand Advani” is concerned, he will be built up as a national leader but the campaigning will be heavily focused around regional issues (Telangana, etc.) and leaders (Modi, Yediyurappa, Dhumal, etc.). Gen Next seems to be ready to have Modi as the consensus ‘next-in-line’. From the older generation, national and state leaders alike ranging from MM Joshi to Kalyan Singh have seen their political fortunes diminish. The other issue will be the allies, though most of them would be agreeable to Modi.
BJP should, in addition to talking about several active Hindu issues (as it is now doing), devote some serious resources to writing India’s true history (I hate the word “re-writing”, the connotation is that the existing history books are actually correct, and now BJP wants to rewrite and “saffronize” them).
****The biggest investment the BJP can make politically (in addition to this being the morally right thing to do) is:
Making people conscious of
1.India’s glorious past
2. How Islamic barbarians destroyed our temples, libraries, killed people etc
and
3. How Lord Macaulay, Max Muller etc overturned our pride in ourselves by falsifying our history on an unsurpassed scale (with the Aryan Invasion Theory etc)
There has to be a “Sahitya Bharati” project.
What bout the 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits who had to leave Kashmir and live in refuegee camps? After 3000 years in the valley they are having to leave their home and the Congress still appeases the terrorists. I keep hearing about voilence against Muslims but what about the thousands of Kashmiri Pandits killed by Islamic terrorists supported by Pakistan? The terrorists have quietened down a but because the situation in Pakistan is bad. Indians are right to be angry at a government that jepordizes the security of their country at the expense of religious minorities. Every country puts the interests of the majority first and then protects minorities. But in India it’s the other way around.
BJP should keep its hands out of re-wrting history- that is for the scholars– stick to politics and bring all HIndus together to lead the Nation to greater prosperity. How is there democracy in India when political dynasties rule major parties, when a barely educated Italian housewife is needed to bring unity to a major policital Party? When Indians start to respect themselves and work to build their country, only then will others respect them and they will no longer be an irrelevant country of one billion people.
BJP won in gujarat because of its good governance despite all apptempts to taint it by the leftist media. I hope that it wins a majority in Parliament so it can mobilize the country for its greater good.
What bout the 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits who had to leave Kashmir and live in refugee camps? After 3000 years in the valley they are had to leave their home; many still live in regugee camps and the Congress still appeases the terrorists. I keep hearing about violence against Muslims but what about the thousands of Kashmiri Pandits killed by Islamic terrorists supported by Pakistan? The terrorists have quietened down a bit because the situation in Pakistan is bad. Indians are right to be angry at a government that jeopardizes the security of their country at the expense of religious minorities. Every country puts the interests of the majority first and then protects minorities. But in India it’s the other way around.
BJP should keep its hands out of re-wrting history- that is for the scholars– stick to politics and bring all HIndus together to lead the Nation to greater prosperity. How is there democracy in India when political dynasties rule major parties, when a barely educated Italian housewife is needed to bring unity to a major policital Party? When Indians start to respect themselves and work to build their country, only then will others respect them and they will no longer be an irrelevant country of one billion people.
BJP won in Gujarat because of its good governance despite all apptempts to taint it by the leftist media. I hope that it wins a majority in Parliament so it can mobilize the country for its greater good.