BJP Should Revisit Ideological Moorings

The BJP’s sweeping victory in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly election in which it bagged a three-fourth majority in the 403-strong house, and with the resurgent party forming coalition governments in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur — Punjab is the sole state in which it failed to win a sizeable vote — the BJP, which wears nationalism and cultural conservatism on its sleeve, has transformed into India’s natural party of governance. This huge electoral victory in India’s most populous (223 million) heartland state two years after the BJP was swept to power at the Centre in General Election 2014 with a two-third majority in the Lok Sabha, means this party has replaced the left-of-centre Congress, which led India to political freedom 70 years ago, as the country’s premier pan-India political formation.  The precipitous fall in electoral fortunes of the Congress is well deserved and overdue. Dominated since independence by the Nehru dynasty which foolishly imposed communist-inspired neta-babu socialism and a notoriously complex licence-permit-quota regimen upon the economy, Congress, which ruled for over half a century at the Centre and in most states, vacuumed and invested national savings into massive, capital-intensive public sector enterprises (PSEs) which have been run into the ground by business-illiterate bureaucrats. And with PSEs unable to generate the surpluses required for investment in infrastructure development and in the social sector (public education and health) even as private industry was denied the ease of doing business, under Congress rule, high-potential post-independence India declined into one of the world’s poorest, unhealthy and illiterate nations.  Unfortunately, prime minister Narendra Modi, who is widely and rightly, acknowledged as the prime architect of the BJP’s stunning electoral victories since 2014, is beginning to sound much like Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi who led her party to an equally impressive victory in the general election of 1971. At the time, she promised to eradicate poverty (garibi hatao) through a series of populist measures including subsidies and loans for the poor. Now with his own pro-poor and anti-rich rhetoric, prime minister Modi is venturing down a similar disastrous path. Fresh from his recent electoral triumph, this is the appropriate time for the prime minister to remember that the BJP is essentially a pro-business, free markets party which needs to reverse Nehruvian socialism which has beggared post-independence India. Therefore, he needs to focus on privatising PSEs, improving the ease of doing business for entrepreneurs, investing in police-judiciary reforms and doubling public health and education outlays. In short, he needs to acknowledge that ‘suited-booted’ businessmen are a better bet than bush-shirt/bandh-galla public sector babus for the prosperity of 21st century India.   Magnanimity Deficit in Triumphal Hour Prime minister Narendra Modi’s decision — or his acquiescence to the decision — to appoint Yogi Adityanath, a die-hard hindutva champion who has repeatedly proclaimed his intent to transform India into a Hindu rashtra, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, is as dismaying as it is confounding. In his moment of electoral triumph, the prime minister — who…