The Gujarat model: BJP’s long innings and the opposition’s missteps

If you want to know how long and hyper-successful the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political project will last, look at Gujarat — where the party, ruling for decades, periodically purges itself and changes the faces running the state because the opposition is comatose.

What this means is that the ruling party in Gujarat, the BJP, is acting both as the government and the opposition to itself. The recent cabinet reshuffle this week illustrates this: all ministers of the Bhupendra Patel-led Cabinet, except him, resigned. Only four were retained, and 17 new ministers were sworn in.

Gujarat is the state that gave Modi multiple terms as Chief Minister and catapulted him to a three-term Prime Minister of India. He and Home Minister Amit Shah retain a huge personal stake and a constant hawk-eye on the state. From Anandiben Patel, (Late) Vijay Rupani, to Bhupendra Patel currently, all the CMs have been Modi’s personal picks endorsed by Shah — and all have been Patidars, the politically dominant caste of Gujarat.

Cautionary tale for opposition

Gujarat is a cautionary tale for India’s shambolic opposition, which shows no political hunger to come to power. A brief spark was seen in the 2017 elections when Rahul Gandhi got his caste arithmetic right and presented Gujarat with three new young leaders: the Patidar face Hardik Patel, fresh off leading an agitation; Alpesh Thakor, the Congress party’s backward caste face; and Jignesh Mevani, the convenor of a Dalit front and Congress MLA in Gujarat. Both Patel and Thakor later joined the BJP.

Gandhi had promised in 2017 to park himself in Gujarat and provide a viable opposition. Like much of Gandhi’s politics, the promise was not kept. The BJP, having learnt the lesson, decided to act as both opposition and government.

In fact, the new BJP strategy is to encourage promising Congress leaders to defect, make them a minister briefly, and then consign them to cold storage. This time, Hardik Patel expected to be a minister, but his hopes were dashed. One of the more known inductions is Riva Jadeja, the wife of cricketer Ravindra Jadeja. Riva Jadeja is an engineer and a first-time MLA in Gujarat. Interestingly, no woman minister has cabinet rank in the current reshuffle.

Stability and governance

Generations of young Gujaratis have seen no government except the BJP, associating it with stability and governance. With goodies and largesse in the form of multi-billion projects such as the Foxconn deal and the Tata Airbus project — given to the most favoured state — the BJP keeps Gujarat happy. Recently, it was announced that the Commonwealth Games, the second-largest games after the Olympics, will be held in Ahmedabad, and Gujarat is also firmly in the running for the Olympic Games. Even the Filmfare awards have left Mumbai for years to be held in Gujarat.

Gujarat was called the original “Hindutva laboratory,” and the Sangh, now celebrating RSS @100, has shown how to keep political power firmly in its grasp. The entire Sangh parivar cultivates Gujarat assiduously and ensures that in the bipolar polity, the Congress simply does not get a look-in.

Role model for BJP

For those who follow politics meticulously, Gujarat is a role model for the BJP nationally and in bellwether states like Uttar Pradesh (UP), where Yogi Adityanath is currently serving his second consecutive term. He is the first chief minister in UP’s history to be re-elected after a full five-year term. Yogi has soaring ambitions and wants to emulate Modi by being his political heir. Unlike Gujarat, UP had two strong regional parties and the Congress.

The BJP has made sure that Mayawati, UP’s first woman Dalit chief minister and chief of the Bahujan Samaj Party, has simply withered away. Recently, Mayawati praised Yogi Adityanath’s governance publicly, leaving the opposition flabbergasted. Mayawati has virtually retired from politics, and the Congress barely exists in UP without organisation on the ground. Some village offices are used as cow shelters, others host local paan (betel leaf) shops. Priyanka Gandhi, after promising to revive the party in UP much like Rahul Gandhi’s promise in Gujarat, never moved to Lucknow, leaving UP feeling jilted at her political immaturity.

At one point, Gandhi had teased contesting against Modi from Varanasi, but it came to naught. The Samajwadi Party, led by Akhilesh Yadav, remains the only real opposition to Yogi’s BJP, but the upper castes in UP are solidly behind Yogi.

The BJP has such enormous political appetite that it wants to replicate the “Gujarat model” in every state. The opposition, particularly the Congress, could not seem to care. Consider Bihar, where the Congress is giving the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) — the strongest opposition party — a tough time. Rahul Gandhi drew huge crowds, promised hope and change, then suddenly left for a trip to South America. A senior Congress leader bitterly asked, “How many seats are we contesting in Columbia?”

And that, really, sums up Gandhi’s priorities. The BJP is having a long innings in power simply because the Congress, the largest opposition party, is a gift that doesn’t stop giving.