Future of BJP

One of the many reasons that attracts me to BJP is that it is one of the few parties in India, where there is a semblance of internal democracy.

Any other party from Shiv Sena in right to Samajwadi party in left is just a prop for stoking egos and furthering narrow interests of regional satraps and their dynasties. The congress has ofcourse perfected the art of sycophancy, to the level of establishing Gandhi dynasty in the secular pantheon, their chutzpah is met only by rationalist parties of TamilNaadu.
Ironically only communist has some semblance of internal democracy among all the secular parties , however, considering their dogmatic positions on Marxism, it is impossible for any sensible Indian to join the left.

In short, BJP is the only party where it is possible for some one can hope to come up without being a member of a influential family. This however, is changing.

Last decade has seen tremendous growth of the party. With the growth however have come numerous challenges.There is growing incidents of the corruption, nepotism and bickering. At present there is a vacuum at the top by the indifferent health of Mr Vajpayee, and damnation of Mr Advaani after his Jinnah speech, to fill this vacuum there is a ongoing tussle between second rung leaders, none of whom are as popular as Mr. Vajpayee or Mr. Advani. This has left the party in a lurch which is astounding given its reasonable performance in state elections since last year and indifferent performance of UPA government at the centre with lame duck PM at the helms.

However, for this party is to be blamed. The party has failed because the way it was structured , ie cadre based works for a marginal political power. BJP drew almost all of it's cadre directly from RSS, which worked since its constituency was committed RSS/Jan Sangh member.
However as it grew it transformed from cadre - based organizations to mass - based organization.
This brought following changes.

1) Addition of constituents who were not as committed as the core.
2) Addition of constituents who though might agree with RSS ideology, have different priorities.


It is obvious that to incorporate these constituents with a less loyalty than core and also different priorities a mass - based - model as opposed to cadre-based-model.
This was also realized by various party ladders, however jockeying for power positions meant that this was never put into the practice. Venkaiah Naidu was largely ineffective in expanding the base or reconciling the ambition of the second rung leadership, on the contrary he sought to secure his position by encouraging antagonism in the party. This ofcourse resulted in the present ideological as well as directional confusion.

Now the rot has sought to be stymied by appointment of Mr. Rajnath Singh as party president.
He is a capable leader and already in his own silent manners doing the re-engineering.

But will that be enough ? I doubt that. The reason is that main strength of a political party is its ideas. And as I said before in religious context, ideas need to be constantly evaluated, new ideas evolve from old one depending on the changed circumstances, old ideas are reaffirmed, rejected and modified all the times.

How is that possible ? Two things, first there should be open and transparent discussion, debate and even dissent has this power to test the robustness of any principle. Any idea which can not withstand debate is incorrect and ought to be changed or may be even discarded. Second when it is said that we live in a information age most of the times it is repeated only for sake of rhetoric and its true import never realized, however there is an explosion of data and information, which if analysed can alter our understanding in different ways.

However for these two processes to take place their importance must be realized.
Unfortunately by repeating the tired slogan of discipline, BJP shows that it has not yet learned .

Discipline is good for Boy Scout or for military , but to use discipline to foist artificial unanimity in political discussion is foolish.

I am sure an argument can be made that in absence of discipline BJP will be disadvantage vis a vis Congress and other persona - based parties. However advantage of discipline is far outweighed by its disadvantage, so even for practical purposes it is not a good policy.

Another argument can be made that discipline can contain the power play that goes in political parties, but in my view that is a false medicine. To give a recent example when Ms. Uma Bharathi was projected as the Chief Ministerial candidate during the M.P. assembly elections, it is hypocritical to raise issue of her capability , this should have been discussed before projecting her as leader. Neither is her being disgruntled totally unjustified, after all she brings the votes, which is more than what can be said about second rung leaders.

Further any tendency to suppress will just worsen the situation.

That is the reason that BJP still sticks to Gandhian Socialism and other outdated sophistry.

For sake of India that it wishes to build, it should open up and abandon false notion of discipline.