Is BJP on the verge of a coma?

Nitin Gadkari addresing a meeting after taking charge as BJP President. Other prominent BJP leaders attended the meeting

The ‘Bhartiya Janata Party’(BJP) or described by many as ‘Bhartiya Junglee Party’ is steeped in crisis such as it has never known before. Vacillating from an identity crisis to a leadership crisis, the party is on the verge of being wiped off from the national scene. It may sound an exaggeration but the reality is - the BJP faced upsets in the last two Lok Sabha elections and is in danger of losing power in majority of states it has been ruling. The possibility is still that - simply a 'possibility', many feel. But talk to any BJP worker and your worst fears are bound to get confirmed. Most are not sure of getting into the Lok Sabha again in the immediate future. What the future will bring no one knows. The unfortunate part of the whole story is that the top leadership is oblivious of the writing on the wall. Perhaps they feel that the old style of manipulating issues, splitting parties, bribing the elected members and strengthening the vote bank will yield results and will retain the party's position in power. While all this has worked in the past, it may not now.
The problem with the BJP is that it has been in power since Independence for a short period of six years, in a coalition government (NDA) in the past 62 years-barring two brief spells of the Atal Vajpayee's rule. Any political party, which sees power for a short period of time, is bound to develop inherent structural abrasions and contradictions. Similarly, the Congress developed several but they managed to keep their house in order. The BJP assigned to neither itself the image of 'Hindutva' but it was neither Hindutva, nor secular nor socialist in action. It disillusioned the majority as well as the minority, labour as well as the entrepreneurial class. While promising to remove corruption in public life, each successive BJP and its allies led government in states as well as the centre, became more and more corrupt.
Today, every BJP or its allies worker believes that only 'he' has the right to rule the country and therefore justifies every means to remain in power. The first principle of power which the BJP leaders have to learn is that power is transitory. The more you try and adhere to it, the more unpopular you are likely to be. It is sad fact that in India, politics and corruption have almost become synonymous. The drama created by BJP on the vote of confidence cannot be forgotten. The world watching cannot forget how some MPs took out bundles of currency. It shows the sorry state of politics of the BJP, where the power-hungry party is willing to stoop to any level. What had happened in Parliament is nothing short of prostitution! The only difference is: it was not the body but the nation's very soul that was being offered to the highest bidder!
The BJP has been moving away from the people gradually. Today, the party is totally alienated from the people and its leaders. The reason being the link between the people and the leader has disappeared. In the past, evolution of leadership was a gradual process. The most damaging fact is that the BJP has not been able to communicate a cogent politics to anyone, not even erstwhile fellow- travelers and supporters. And this new paranoid, inward-looking avatar is certainly unlikely to win it any more political ground. After, the party’s debacle in 2009 their leaders went into a ‘Chintan Baithak’ at Shimla as a bunch of losers trying to clean up their act. They re-emerged in the form of a bunch of self-destructive lunatics. BJP, in practice is frequently being revealed to be a party of people who have no idea what they are doing or where they want to go.
The BJP's brittleness is evident in the way it had disregarded institutional proprietary from Jaswant Singh's expulsion. Further, Arun Shourie's remark of BJP's leadership as 'Alice in blunder land', turmoil in Rajasthan and now Bihar and outburst of other leaders like Nitish Kumar, Jaswant Singh, Brajesh Mishra and Sudheendra Kulkarni, Uma Bharati have hit a nail in the coffin for the BJP. The moves made by the BJP leadership proved to be blunderous. And these moves are not carried out with a view to improve the administration in the leadership but to regain power.
With a weakening BJP, the Congress seems to be set to consolidate its position at the Centre and majority of states. Unless and until the mess created by the BJP is cleaned and the confidence of the masses is again re-stored, the BJP party appears to be slipping into coma. What happens in the next Lok Sabha and many State Assembly elections would be interesting to watch. If the writing on the wall was clear after the parliamentary elections this year, it became pronounced that the Congress continues on its revival path and the BJP which tasted power from the Hindutva belt- Uttar Pradesh, is nowhere in the recognition and continues its journey downhill. The Left is shrinking and the right is going nowhere. But the BJP is definitely slipping into a coma.
The Bharatiya Junglee Party (BJP) or the National Disaster Alliance (NDA), if, it ever has to come to power needs to wallow in the mire of astrology, palmistry, karmakand, abracadabra, Vedic slaughter, and shamanism. These induce them to keep looking for answers to their problems in the mist-enveloped regions of the occult and the obscure. That is the only way these usurpers can ensure their safety from the fury of the people. The degeneration of the BJP from the vibrant Hindu movement that it was in the 1990s, as a party with a vision and an agenda, to what it has become today – a vehicle for individual ambitions - can be best gauged by those whom the BJP has chosen as its face and voice, as its power-brokers, as its point-persons, and as its strategists. But in a society like India, these are viruses that poison the system and the ultimate result is a state of coma.