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Just when BJP is triumphantly sweeping polls in state after state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government appears to have hit a wall in Parliament.

It has been a brilliant year for BJP and Modi’s great achievement is to have broadened its appeal to bring in a vast number of aspiring Indians who have effectively become the ‘economic right’ of the party. Having risen through their own efforts they were uncomfortable with Congress’s leftish policy of giveaways. Many, however, do not subscribe to Hindutva. Modi may have filled a political vacuum but he has created tensions in his party between the ‘economic right’ and ‘cultural right’.

Ironically, at the very moment BJP is at its peak, the Opposition has a reason to smile. The trouble started a few months ago with talk of ‘love jihad’ and of Muslim men out to lure Hindu girls into marriage to convert them to Islam and make India a Muslim nation. But that died quickly when BJP lost bypolls in UP.

Then came Yogi Adityanath’s anti-Muslim remarks in Parliament. The irrepressible Smriti Irani got into trouble wanting to replace German with Sanskrit in Kendriya Vidyalayas. Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti implied that non-Hindus were illegitimate. Another BJP MP praised the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi as a ‘patriot’.

What stopped the show in the Rajya Sabha was RSS’s plan for mass reconversions, ‘ghar vapsi’, and Mohan Bhagwat’s statement that India is a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

The Opposition in Parliament was delighted. It embarrassed the government, paralysing the last weeks of the Rajya Sabha and blocking key economic reforms. For a brief moment, ‘strong’ Modi resembled ‘weak’ Manmohan Singh.

It must have felt strange for a universally regarded strongman, internationally feted, to be thus felled. Singh must have felt like this when activists of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council drafted the bizarre, damaging land acquisition law that has ended in bringing land transfers to a halt, harming industry, farmers and jobs.

Political parties win elections when they move to the moderate centre. This explains Modi’s miraculous success at the polls. But this strategy leaves the old extremists and loyalists dissatisfied. A successful leader knows how to manage them. Ronald Reagan kept the cultural fringe of the Republican Party at bay because of his relentless focus on the economy.

But Mitt Romney failed to defeat Barack Obama because he pandered to his party’s cultural right. David Cameron in England is also failing to manage the ‘cultural right’ and its anti-Europe policy. Tony Blair, in contrast, successfully marginalised the left wing unions of the Labour Party. Sonia Gandhi recently flunked in India because she allowed extremists – leftist allies in UPA-1 and NAC activists in UPA-2 – to dictate the agenda.

Modi is acutely aware that his mandate is jobs and growth and he must curb unruly extremists of the Sangh Parivar. It won’t be easy because he needs RSS’s ‘foot soldiers’ for future elections. But he has done it before. As chief minister of Gujarat, he did marginalise RSS.

There is a wonderful Sanskrit word, ekagrata or ‘one-pointedness’, which Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutra is essential for spiritual progress. You also need to be one-pointed for material progress. You cannot talk ‘development’ in the government and ‘conversions’ in the party.

Yes, jobs will come if we can raise India’s rank to 50 from 142 in the Ease of Doing Business but that will require institutional change. Why should it take 65 approvals to start a business in India when our competitor nations have only 10? You also need to change rapacious attitudes – for example, every second officer in the tax department is considered corrupt. Changing this requires one-pointed focus at the top.

It is unhealthy for India to be reforming by stealth two decades after reforms began. Modi must ‘sell’ his reforms – especially to the ‘cultural right’ in his party. He must avoid the error of Manmohan Singh who failed to convert his own party – even Sonia Gandhi!

Now that the government has announced insurance and coal reforms through an ordinance, Modi’s task is to educate us on the benefits – and they are substantial. It will help if he uses the language of the nationalist right. He should appeal to India’s great trading past when a Roman ship touched an Indian port daily. He should speak not about Adam Smith’s market but the famed market of Hampi. To explain the value of low tax rates, he should appeal to the Arthashastra where Rajadharma dictates ‘shatbhaga’ (or 15% tax rate).

The division between the ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ right means that BJP has matured into a full-fledged conservative party that now resembles the Republicans in America, Tories in the UK or Christian Democrats in Germany. But both sides need to coexist.

The ‘economic right’ cannot win elections on its own – it is hard to sell the free market at the polls because Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ is not visible to the voter and will generally lose to a populist candidate who promises free power and cheap food. The ‘cultural right’ is too extreme for the middle of the road voter. Hence, Prime Minister Modi has his work cut out – he must assuage the anxieties of the cultural extremists while pursuing his jobs agenda with ekagrata .

Gurcharan Das, January 9th 2015
 

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