Cover Story

OTHER STORIES RELATED TO COVER Post Mortem Futurepol

At one level, the three-monthly National Executive meetings of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are a ritual, devoted as much to bonding as real decision-making. But this month's session in the idyllic bliss of Goa is calculated to be different. Not since the time the party was reduced to two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 has it faced a crisis of this magnitude. A string of electoral defeats, inner-party tensions, splits in the state units, tensions within the Sangh Parivar and a leadership crisis have contributed to an impression of imminent collapse. The leading party in India's ruling coalition is worried, demoralised and resentful. There is a feeling that unless the trend is reversed, the BJP could face another round of electoral reverses next year, setting the stage for the deluge in the Lok Sabha elections due in 2004.

OUT OF FOCUS: Vajpayee's leadership skills are failing

Nothing seems to be going right for the BJP. The misery following the devastating defeats in the three northern states has been compounded by the humiliation that voters in Delhi, once a BJP bastion, heaped on the party in the recent municipal elections where it managed to win just 17 of the 134 seats. In Uttar Pradesh, factional boundaries have followed the rout and everyone is taking a swipe at everyone else. In the recent Rajya Sabha elections, BJP legislators cocked a snook at the party high command and resorted to brazen cross-voting. The beneficiaries included beer baron Vijay Mallya from Karnataka and independent candidate Dilip Ray from Orissa. To cap it all is the sheer ineptitude of the Narendra Modi Government in controlling communal clashes in Gujarat for which the party and the Government at the Centre must carry the can.

The Decline of the Party 1998 At the start of NDA's term, BJP ruled in... ... Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

2002 Four years later, the BJP is in power in ... ... Gujarat, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand.

The Shrinking Base Since it led the NDA to power at the Centre in 1998, the BJP has contested elections in 19 state assemblies, lost 14 and won five, two of them as junior partner of other NDA allies. The party's downward spiral has cut across regions-from Assam to Maharashtra and Punjab to Karnataka.

The BJP's fall from grace has been unenviable considering that its growth pattern was the dream of almost any political party. From merely two seats in 1984, the BJP rose to 88 in the elections five years later, skyrocketing to 121 in 1991. By 1996 it had become the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha with 161 seats. In the 1998 and 1999 elections, the BJP retained its largest party status, winning over 180 seats each time. What then explains the swift decline?

The search for scapegoats within the party has long begun. Some blame it on the scarcity of top leadership, others on local factors and inefficient regional leaders, while the fashionable course is to point a finger at Yashwant Sinha and his economics. A senior leader concedes that the seeds of the slow collapse were perhaps sown around the time of the formation of the NDA and the National Agenda of Governance (nag). The pet issues on the party's agenda-the Ram temple, the abrogation of Article 370 and a uniform civil code-that had once set it apart from its political contemporaries, were dropped due to the compulsions of coalition politics.

Suddenly, the party found itself without a mooring-ideological or political. This dilution of ideology heightened frustration among the party leaders and cadres. "When all the NDA allies have been following their agendas, why is only the BJP expected to set it aside? The nag is for the Government but the party is free to protect its own interests," says BJP Minority Morcha convener M.A. Naqvi.

If the ideological base has been eroded, the party is in a shambles structurally too. For years, the BJP headquarters on Delhi's Ashoka Road served as the nerve-centre of a streamlined political outfit that organised some of the best election campaigns the country has seen-for the 1991, 1996 and 1998 Lok Sabha elections. All that changed after L.K. Advani stepped down as party chief. The avuncular but uninspiring Kushabhau Thakre, who took over from Advani, was replaced after one term by Bangaru Laxman. The new party president lasted just a few months before the Tehelka scandal subsumed him. The image of the party president caught on camera taking wads of currency notes from a self-professed defence supplier shamed the party and punctured the BJP's claim to be an upright "party with a difference". His replacement, K. Jana Krishnamurthy, has kept controversy at bay but has done little else.

The BJP could do with a much-needed thrust and facilitation of a meaningful interaction with the Government. Krishnamurthy has failed to do either. In a bid to protect his turf, he has spurned all offers of help from those who are in government. He has run the party central office like a private fiefdom whose writ doesn't extend beyond its four walls.

Not that long ago, the place was abuzz with activity with senior leaders like M. Venkaiah Naidu and Modi holding forth on the party's policies and programmes every evening. Now, only a handful attend the routine press briefings addressed by party spokespersons who lack both credentials and conviction. Sunil Shastri is there for no other reason than that he is the son of India's second prime minister while Maya Singh snagged the job due to her kinship with the late party vice-president Vijayaraje Scindia. Sanjay Joshi, the other general secretary, was banished from Gujarat after Modi became chief minister and is petrified of any interaction.

Inertia and Krishnamurthy are inseparable. More than three years ago, as party vice-president, he was authorised to evolve a mechanism to ensure greater dynamics between the party and the Government. Among the steps mooted were monthly meetings between the prime minister and the party's national office-bearers at the Ashoka Road headquarters and statewise meetings with party MPs, also once a month. Three years on, A.B. Vajpayee is yet to drive down to Ashoka Road.

The crisis of leadership has permeated to the states. Confronted by serious bouts of factionalism, the BJP leadership-egged on by the RSS that insists on intrusive micro-management-has reposed faith in venerable elders who have neither the drive nor the imagination to lead a mass party. In Rajasthan, no alternative has been found for the veteran Bhairon Singh Shekhawat-the septuagenarian Bhanwar Lal Sharma was dragged out of retirement last year and made party president. More to the point, the local party has spared no effort to undercut Shekhawat. Just like in Delhi where the RSS has vetoed all attempts to project Madan Lal Khurana as the face for next year's assembly election. In Madhya Pradesh, another state where assembly polls are due next year, there has been no leader projected after Sunder Lal Patwa. In Gujarat, there is paralysis over whether to dump Modi and possibly suffer a setback in the state or persist with him and be tarred with the brush of intolerance nationally.

The depletion of able leadership in the party would not have been so glaringly visible if Vajpayee's stewardship had been something to talk about. Unfortunately, such skills, if present, remain hidden. Though a Jan Sanghi for over five decades and the founder president of the BJP, besides being its star campaigner, Vajpayee has by and large preferred to stay away from organisation matters, barring the occasional request to a state party chief or the Central Election Committee meeting to give a poll ticket to an old acquaintance.

Even such aloofness on Vajpayee's part would not have done much harm to the party or the Government if the prime minister had, as in the past, worked in tandem with Advani, the quintessential organisation man. But even that communication is missing. This is not to suggest that the two are slugging it out behind closed doors but there's no denying the lack of warmth between the two stalwarts.

The constraints of office may be to blame. The friends who strolled to a nearby theatre for a late-night film or drove down to each other's places for a home-cooked meal are now surrounded by courtiers who have their own interests to protect. Each side thinks nothing of planting stories in the press about the alleged shenanigans of the other side. An indication of the depths to which this shadow-boxing has plummeted came on March 13. Shortly after the Supreme Court's order disallowing puja in Ayodhya, Advani is said to have decided to quit the Government and move to the party. His decision was relayed to the prime minister by two senior cabinet ministers, but an emotional Vajpayee reportedly rejected the idea, citing his frailty and inability to carry on in office without Advani's help. The courtiers, however, gave the story a twist: that Vajpayee had rejected the home minister's offer to prevent the emergence of a parallel power centre in the party. As of now, Advani has abandoned plans to return to the party.