Modi and BJP: It's now time for creative destruction

Nature abhors a vacuum. The BJP’s power vacuum, apparent for eight years now after the exit of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the failure of LK Advani to fill the gap, is finally about to end. The party’s national executive meeting in Mumbai, which ended on Friday, will thus be remembered for marking a decisive shift in power, as this Firstpost story points out.

But the path will not be easy. A lot of dirty linen could be washed in public in the process. What’s really ahead is a phase of creative destruction for the BJP as power is consolidated, new alliances forged, and weaker forces flushed out of the party or sidelined.

This is the real meaning of the exit of Sanjay Joshi from the national executive before the Mumbai meeting. The failure of Advani and Sushma to attend the party’s rally on Friday is also a tell-tale signal. As Advani’s protégé and chosen successor, Swaraj is currently a loser in the rise of the Narendra Modi-Nitin Gadkari-Arun Jaitley axis.

It’s not as if the rise of Modi has come as a shock to Advani. This is how The Indian Express reported on what Advani said at the meeting: “Many people are upset with the Congress. But they come to me and ask whether the BJP can fulfill their expectations. It is a point to ponder…The message that the BJP is the answer has to be conveyed effectively.”

Always a strategic thinker, Advani may not have realised that the logic of his statement actually led to Modi’s door. Power can never really be just handed over to chosen successors – except in dynastic organisations, and that, too, only in feudal set-ups like the Congress. Power is something that one takes if one has the capability; it cannot be conferred as a gift.

Hence Modi, and not Gadkari or Swaraj. Modi has demonstrated a will to power. Gadkari and Swaraj hoped to receive it as a bequest.

Nitin Gadkari has the blessings of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) bosses in Nagpur. He was catapulted to the party’s top job after the 2009 debacle when the BJP appeared to be falling apart. Why didn’t he consolidate his power? The simple answer is: he is not a mass leader. A technocrat can wield power only if there is a real power behind him. Manmohan Singh needed a Narasimha Rao to deliver his reforms.

The moral: even the RSS cannot confer power on somebody just because it likes him.

The Modi-Gadkari truce, which was preceded by the ouster of Sanjay Joshi (Modi’e bête noire and another RSS favourite) is thus a clear acknowledgement that the RSS sees the limits of its own ability to influence the future of the BJP. There is no doubt that it has asked Gadkari to make his peace with Modi for strategic reasons: having him as BJP president for a second term, which reportedly angered Advani, at least allows the RSS to have some voice in the BJP’s policy-making.

The RSS may not be entirely comfortable with Modi’s independent power base and ability to go it alone, but the logic of power is apparent. After Vajpayee, only Modi has the ability to take his own decisions even while retaining some relationship with the RSS. Advani was always willing to listen to the RSS. Modi is the man who will make the RSS listen. This is another power-shift that is vital to the re-building of the BJP.

Gadkari, for his part, may have realised that he can never really be PM material. He is thus insuring his future by aligning with Modi. It suits Modi to retain Gadkari in the party president’s post, since the Gujarat assembly elections will tie him down till early next year. He needs someone to keep other power predators away while he is distracted in Gujarat.

The Modi-Gadkari alliance is now setting off its own waves of realignment within the party. BS Yeddyurappa, the sulking former Chief Minister of Karnataka, has thrown his weight behind Modi and announced that he should be the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. It might suit him to say so, but his equations with Modi were always good. Modi has not reciprocated this support yet, but he knows that Yeddyurappa may be a valuable ally in Karnataka – at least till he makes up his own mind on whether there can be someone better to lead the party in that southern state.

In the months ahead, the other power players in the BJP – mostly the Chief Ministers (or former CMs) of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Himachal, and the deputy CM of Bihar, Sushil Modi – will take their call on whether to start making their peace with Modi or stay neutral or even actively oppose him.

The establishment of Modi as primus inter pares among BJP leaders will have ripple effects in the states as well. So don’t be surprised if there are leadership changes at the state level too in 2013.

The loser so far – Sushma Swaraj – will also have to decide whether her old ties to Advani are a help or a hindrance to her career. A strong speaker, she was one of the BJP leaders who eulogised Modi at his Sadhbhavna fast last September, but she has since been trying to create her own leadership space by vigorous participation in Lok Sabha debates. She surely nurtured prime ministerial ambitions, but now that cannot come true.

Given Arun Jaitley’s reported closeness to Modi, she will have a  tough time figuring out her own political destination and equations with Modi.

To be sure, it is not a foregone conclusion that Modi will come out unscathed in the coming power struggle. But the straws in the wind point that way since the party cadre looks more energised by Modi than any of the current leaders.

The losers who are unhappy with Modi will be tempted to air their disgruntlement in public. But that is only to be expected.

Power struggles are never easy affairs. Not least for a clueless party like BJP which squandered eight years of opportunity by failing to get its act together.

It may all be coming together now under Modi, but don’t expect it to be a bloodless coup. The fact that the BJP national executive began and ended with controversy - with the ouster of Sanjay Joshi and the Advani-Swaraj sulk - is a pointer to what lies ahead.