Not surprisingly, villages are dwindling. The latest Census reports that, for the first time, urban population grew faster than the rural one. It is also a fact that our villages — all villages all over the globe — are too small to support commercially the twelve types of services that they should offer.
How many Lok Sabha Constituencies can still be described as rural or conversely what is the count of Constituencies that are mostly Urban or Semi-Urban/Rurban ?
Okay i go against the wisdom of my political analyst GURU @offstumped and advocate that Uma's return will help it in UP http://bit.ly/iOE4OT— Prasanna Viswanathan (@prasannavishy) June 07, 2011
Now we know the answer to the question posed at the bottom of this blog post http://is.gd/RiSYhe— Offstumped (@offstumped) June 07, 2011
To better understand the possible calculation here rewind back to 2006 UP Civic Polls http://is.gd/5uSBfg— Offstumped (@offstumped) June 07, 2011
Interesting range of reactions well let us face it BJP is in the race for 2nd place in UP at best given the reality….— Offstumped (@offstumped) June 07, 2011
Ok gotcha – this one is in English !
The battle royale for Uttar Pradesh has started nearly a year ahead of schedule. There is a palpable sense of desperation within the Congress with this early attempt at forcing a showdown with Mayawati. The reasons for that desperation become clear from a piece which had appeared in the Telegraph a few weeks back which had the below to say:
Who will be the counterpoint to Modi from the Congress?
Or
will the grand, old and tired party revert to the elected-representatives-will-elect-the-leader syndrome and have no viable and charismatic person as potential prime minister in these changed times? If there is a will in the Congress to compete head on, it needs to get Rahul Gandhi as the captain of the team. No other candidate fits the bill for circa 2014. The process has to begin now, halfway through this term, to enable the reinvention of a tired Congress into a liberal party representing a new millennium.
Does Rahul Gandhi have the political will to go in for the kill?
Much has already been written about Rahul Gandhi’s Bhatta Parsaul fiasco. The brazen manner in which the Mother and Son duo and the Congress’ spin machine have sidestepped Rahul’s exaggerations goes to show how high the stakes are for Rahul in Uttar Pradesh. For a loss in Uttar Pradesh would severely dent Rahul’s prospects for taking over the mantle in Delhi.
But this post is not so much about Rahul’s readiness or Mayawati’s prospects. But rather about the others who are getting squeezed out and sidelined in what is shaping up to be a bi-polar battle for soundbites and media coverage in Uttar Pradesh. It would be premature to write off Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party given how he has managed to preserve a respectable base for his party through both the 2007 assembly polls and the 2009 lok sabha polls.
It is clear that the biggest loser in this emerging bipolar political debate is the BJP. It has been left with no choice but to adopt a “me too” tone on the political issues during the weeks gone by.
Its meek “me too” squeals evoked more pity than outrage. Mr. Rajnath Singh’s token hunger strike and symbolic arrests registered a mere blip on the media radar. Mr. Kalraj Mishra’s outlandish claims on casualties in Bhatta Parsaul notwithstanding, his party was spared the embarrassment thanks to the media attention being focused on Rahul Gandhi’s goof-up.
Understandably the BJP’s next national executive is being held in Lucknow on June 4th and 5th with an eye on revival in Uttar Pradesh. There has also been talk of projecting the Rajnath Singh Kalraj Mishra duo as the faces of the BJP for the upcoming polls. This follows earlier talk of roping in a discredited Uma Bharati to shore up the BJP’s fortunes in UP. One hasnt heard much on that lately, the Uma Bharati imminent return to BJP story having done more than one round in the media already.
All of the above points clearly to the fact that the BJP has run out of ideas on its revival in UP. It continues to look to the baggage of the past for salvaging the future.
There in lies the classic dilemma for the BJP :
whether to persist with an incremental strategy of microengineering electoral outcomes in specific seats
OR
whether to take a bold gamble with a radical strategy that polarizes the debate into BJP versus others
The victory in the UP Civic Polls is a confirmation that the BJP has finally learnt an important lesson on how a Right of Center Political outfit can win elections as demonstrated by the Republicans in the United States. It is by focusing on its base. By bringing in Sanjay Joshi and RSS pracharaks to plan and execute the nuts and bolts of the campaign in the UP Civic Polls, the BJP it now appears accomplished exactly that by ensuring its base is reached out to, listened to in selecing candidates and is mobilized and motivated to show up at the hustings to make a difference when the ballots are tallied.
But then less than a year later this BJP machine was of little consequence as Blue became the new saffron during the assembly polls.
The BJP vote base that had remained intact since the watershed years of 1990s had drifted significantly in these safe seats to the BSP is indicative of the “soft hindutva” Mayawati has experimented with.
Offstumped is proposing to the BJP that it must get bold in Uttar Pradesh to shake up the moribund political establishment steeped in a fuedal culture. The BJP must do so by making a dramatic break from the past practice of “selecting” the next leader for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. It must announce an “Open Primary” election by which the next leader for the BJP would be elected by Party members in Uttar Pradesh. It must open up participation in this “Open Primary” to the general public through a simple sign-up process at the local level.It must make the entire process for conducting this “Open Primary” transparent to the public through the media and interactive through the internet. It is to be expected that there will be immense skepticism and cynicism in doing something like this. It is also likely that a process of this kind is not without risks and could fail on the back of inflated expectations.
However on the flip side what does the BJP have to lose in Uttar Pradesh ?
Let us not under-estimate the importance of this question. It would be an academic matter whether the BJP ends up 3rd of 4th in Uttar Pradesh. With a long list of upstarts from Baba Ramdev to Anna Hazare attempting to influence the UP Polls at the expense of the BJP’s vote base, there is a real and present danger of the BJP slipping even further down that list.
Either way its dreams for 2014 and perhaps even 2019 will be nipped in the bud.
So what do you think the BJP must do to for it to matter in the final outcome in Uttar Pradesh – voice your opinion ahead of the BJP’s National Executive.
Had consciously decided against blogging on what was the most anticipated but perhaps belated event, of the decade gone by – the dramatic killing of Bin Laden in Pakistan over the weekend.
Deflecting attention away from much of the commentary around the actual incident, this blog post focuses on what may be some likely unintended consequences to Indian Politics.
It was interesting to note two reactions from opposite ends of the spectrum within the Congress Party in response to the Bin Laden killing. On the one hand you had a strident note from Home Minister P. Chidambaram on making a pointed demand from Pakistan on Terrorists of interest to India. On the other you had Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh pandering to what has come to be his pet constituency – the Muslim Vote bank, with comments on the manner of Bin Laden’s burial at sea.
Both these comments from opposite ends of the spectrum saw some off the record, unattributed reactions in the media today. First this which sought to highlight how Chidambaram’s remarks were at variance with the Prime Minister’s foreign policy thrust lately. Next this which sought to highlight the discomfiture within certain sections of the Congress and the Government on what amounted to making political capital over Bin Laden’s Muslim identity.
On the surface both the remarks and the reactions may seem to indicate politics as usual. But then coming from two individuals who have been seen as positioning themselves for a post-Manmohan scenario it must be asked if Bin Laden’s death in Pakistan will have the unintended consequence of hastening Manmohan Singh’s exit from office ?
It was not too long ago that Manmohan Singh had hinted at peace process with Pakistan being the personal milestone to mark the end of a satisfactory stint in office for him. The manner of Bin Laden’s death in Pakistan has triggered a chain of political events in that country which are likely to make any progress on Manmohan Singh’s peace process far more complicated than he would have liked.
In fact it is arguable that this event may result in no progress at all for the foreseeable future on the peace process while both – the State inside the State in Pakistan and the United States come to terms with the circumstances of Bin Laden’s successful habitation in Abbotabad for so many years. The anxiety on account of this likely uncertainty is palpable among the Track-2 peaceniks with this pre-emptive op-ed by Sid Varadarajan in “The Hindu”.
With his only remaining private objective for staying in office now staring an uncertain future, we must not be surprised if events hasten an early exit.
The Offstumped Book project is a Social Media Experiment in Fiction Writing. This poll is to help shape the direction this project takes based on reader feedback.
A podcast conversation with @dubash (http://phalaka.com) where we wrap up the Uttar Pradesh polls discussion with a look at the final numbers and analysis of vote shares. We also look ahead on all the buzz around Akhilesh Yadav, the rise of the Samajwadi Party and all of the day-dreaming over a possible Third Front Government [...]
Opinions expressed on this site using the alias Offstumped are the blogger's personal opinions and do not in any way reflect the views of the blogger's Employers.
well let us face it BJP is in the race for 2nd place in UP at best given the reality….— 
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