Back to TINA?

I like the story “35 years ago” that comes with every issue of the magazine India Today. Sometimes the contrast between then and now tells a pitiful transition of some things. Like that of the BJP. 20 years back, the party was at the zenith of its Ram fever and had formed a government in UP, with Kalyan Singh as its CM. Today, UP is readying for polls and the party seems nowhere in the picture. For that matter, the Congress does not seem to be at any advantageous position either.

But think of it. The BJP has been given many opportunities on a platter. Over the last five years, Mayawati has been more busy building elephants and statues than building roads and highways. The Samajwadi Party has lost its way in the maze of Mayawati statues and its leader Amar Singh comes, vanishes and reappears, now looking beyond recognition.

The Congress, having abandoned the nationalist themes of Nehru, is busy with its confounding math on caste and religion, with quotas and night-stays at Dalit homes. The party has never been in a worse condition than it is now, ever since it came to power in 2004. Scams after scams have sullied its image, if any existed. Anna and Baba seem bent on teaching it a lesson. “Our PM is an honest man” is an argument no one seems to buy, the line smacking of Shakespere’s “But Brutus is an honourable man.” The party is unable to sail smoothly with the Bengali didi threatening to rock the boat. Thanks to the ilk of Digvijay Singh, the party has scored countless self-goals.

So where does the BJP stand? Forget the UP polls, where the party is anyway in the ‘also ran’ category, the BJP is least ready for the battle ahead in 2014. The party once boasted of a well-trained cadre, which ran in unison to propel the party to power in 1998 and 1999. The leaders were considered to be less corrupt and the BJP called itself the party with a difference. The much touted lotus in Karnataka has already started wilting in the marsh of mines and corruption. A party crying foul about corruption is busy inducting members who have been rejected from a party like BSP on corruption charges! The party seems to suffering from a multiple personality disorder after two successive defeats at the centre. Through their actions, they have done more to dent their image than to build it, having failed to define its ideology to the new voters. The party seems to be blinking in darkness when any question of the next PM candidate comes up. Does it have another statesman like Vajpayee who can win appeal across board? The party leaders seem more comfortable working from TV studios than in the arteries of India. If the party does not buck up now, the country will be pushed back to the TINA (There is no alternative) days of the 1970s, when Indira was voted back to power, not because the Congress was good at its work, but because the opposition was worse!