At one of independent India’s largest gatherings of party workers charged with responsibility to cajole voters to the polling booths on election day, the BJP under prime ministerial contender Narendra Modi sounded the bugle for a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’, which he claimed was the unfulfilled dream of Mahatma Gandhi. A galaxy of party stalwarts simultaneously raised the battle-cry for war, first in the Assembly elections slated for November, and subsequently for the 2014 general election which may be sooner than slated given the alacrity with which the Centre has announced the Seventh Pay Commission for government employees.
Organised on the birth anniversary of Jana Sangh stalwart and political ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya who sought to articulate an alternative model of development based on indigenous categories as opposed to capitalist or communist models borrowed from the West, the big question that loomed at the Karyakarta Mahakumbh dangled tantalizingly in the air – will the party stalwarts manage to usher in the ‘Hindu Century’ that Upadhyaya predicted the twenty-first century was fated to be?
Certainly Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is hoping for a hat-trick third time victory, left no stone unturned to make the function memorable. Given the fact that it was exclusively for polling booth managers and not for the general public or party workers, the gathering – a staggering 7,21,083 invitees present (district-wise figures were called out) – indicated the new ambition among BJP State leaders to try to surpass their victory margins with every subsequent election. These new generation leaders are not satisfied to simply buck the anti-incumbency factor and retain power; they aspire for higher targets of growth and delivery, and higher percentages of votes polled and seats won.
Narendra Modi, no mean manager himself, was impressed; he called the stupendous gathering the greatest tribute to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, a man who lived for the organisation and its growth, and called upon the karyakartas to make Upadhyaya’s approaching birth centenary in 2015-2016 a world-wide celebration under the auspices of a BJP regime in New Delhi.
Recalling his long association with Madhya Pradesh (he was in-charge of the State at the time of the bifurcation of Chhattisgarh), the Gujarat Chief Minister said that despite ruling the nation for six decades, the Congress never spoke of inclusive growth. This term has suddenly sprouted in the party’s lexicon after the sterling performance of BJP Governments came to public notice.
Citing the case of the 20-point programme initiated by late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which continued unchanged by successive governments even after Congress lost power at the Centre or in States, he said that the Centre’s own internal audits showed that the top five performers in the past seven-eight years were BJP and other non-Congress States! Not one Congress-ruled State made the grade, and when he (Modi) mentioned this at a meeting called by the Centre, the Congress was shocked and stopped the process of making performance audits public!
Flagging off Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s election campaign, Modi warned the audience that the BJP Government run by Sunderlal Patwa had done much for the State, but was voted out for some small misdemeanor. This gave the Congress ten years of power, during which it ran the State to the ground. Now, Chouhan has put the BIMARU state on its feet again; at this critical stage if Congress is allowed to claw its way back to Bhopal, then its decade-long hunger would devour the State again.
The Delhi sultanate, he said, does everything to retard the progress of BJP States, a form of spite unheard of under Atal ji and the NDA. Pointing out how Chouhan had taken electricity generation in the State from 3000 MW in decades of Congress rule to over 10,000 MW in just 10 years, Modi informed the people that if gates are installed on the Sardar Sarovar Dam, Madhya Pradesh will get an extra 800 MW of power absolutely free. New Delhi, he said, was not allowing this to happen, and this kind of retardation will hit the State once again if its flight towards the skies is hit in any way.
Heaping fulsome praise upon his Madhya Pradesh counterpart, Modi said Congress no longer had the stomach to combat the BJP, hence the next election has been outsourced to the CBI! Chouhan, he said, had recited a saga of corruption scandals, A to Z, and the zeros in the embezzled amounts all end in Janpath. Harness the wind of change sweeping the nation at the polls, he exhorted the karyakartas in vintage Vajpayee tones, Gandhi’s incomplete dream of winding up the Congress from Hindustan is the unfinished agenda of the BJP.
The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, a steady but not slow achiever, showcased his organizational genius at the mammoth show. Tracing the dream of Swaraj in Delhi back to Chhatrapati Shivaji, he recalled the vision of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and the generous contributions made by late Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia, appealed for a hat-trick victory for himself, with Delhi as the party final destination.
Previously, Anantha Kumar announced the ambitious goal for MP as 172-173 seats from the current 145, to set a new milestone and eventually take the Red Fort. Chouhan himself called for booting out the “Lanka of corruption” in Delhi, which is pulling out all stops to somehow unseat the BJP in Bhopal, with threats of CBI and Income Tax raids. Reciting a list of major scams from A to Z (one for each letter of the English alphabet), he challenged the CBI and Income Tax authorities to go to the house of Robert Vadra.
Citing the impressive strides taken by the State under his stewardship in myriad arenas, from the promised bijli, sadak, pani, campaign by his predecessor Uma Bharati, to agriculture (18.90 per cent growth), agro-industry, etc, Chouhan said he had prepared industrial corridors to take the State to the next stage of development. Madhya Pradesh, he said, is set to be the next destination for investment in the pharmaceutical, textile, auto, IT and food processing sectors. His dream, he exhorted, is for local youth to become entrepreneurs, to encourage which the State would guarantee their bank loans.
Chouhan made special mention of the destruction of the State’s education system by the previous Congress regime, which destroyed the teacher cadre completely. While BJP is rebuilding this from scratch, the next milestone would be medical and engineering colleges.
The galaxy of stalwarts who spoke at the sammelan included former deputy prime minister LK Advani, party president Rajnath Singh who recalled that Bhopal was the capital of the legendary Raja Bhoj and would adhere to his standards of governance, former chief minister Uma Bharati, former party presidents Murli Manohar Joshi and Venkaiah Naidu, leaders of the opposition in parliament Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, and Anantha Kumar.
Niticentral.com, 26 September 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/09/26/narendra-modi-will-lead-the-hindu-century-137743.html