-Suraj Neupane, January 2017
India, a country with ethnic diversity, largest democracy; will never fail to surprise you. From rich billionaires to poor slum, nobody is left behind in the process of exercising the greatest, of its kind, democratic process of election; that gives a sense of inclusion for every individual.
More than the process itself, you need to look at Indian election campaign to understand the real essence of democracy. Almost 50 regional parties fight together with 7 national parties to get elected to ‘Lok sabha’ member of lower house. During this process two major alliances is formed.
NDA, although it stands for National Democratic Alliance but it represents the Hindu nationalist agenda in the forefront. However on the other side, UPA; United progressive alliance is the establishment politics lead by Nehru Gandhi family since India got independence. This alliance has been in power for as long as 60 years since British colony was overthrown.
After partition of ‘Greater India’; Pakistan with Muslim majority while India as Hindu nation, there have been tensions between the two neighbouring nations heading towards war for at least 4 times in the last 70 years of independent. These tensions have raised alarm among the international community because of the fact that both the nations possess nuclear weapons while both have not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. At the same time, India has seen communal violence between Hindus and Muslims within its territory.
Although with the history of religious intolerance India is however a secular nation. This background provided Narendra Modi to carve a path to power. By 2002 a border state of Gujarat just elected state government of BJP led by Narendra Modi. Soon after his power the ‘Gujarat Riot’ was sparked with thousand of Muslims being set alive on fire. The allegation still follows Modi where he is accused of doing too little to stop the riot. The ground of human rights related to Gujarat riot United States rejected entry visa for Modi on 2006.
After winning his first term as chief minister of Gujrat there was a clear message in Delhi high command of BJP that Modi and his team can bring BJP to life. Both Modi and his right-hand man Amit Shah were so powerful they both staged a branding of Gujarat as the model of development for the nation and Modi as the leader to lead this front. It took no longer for Modi to market his leadership capacity around the world with ‘VIbrant Gujarat’ an event which would bring the world leaders and business investors to Gujarat every year since 2003.
Vibrant Gujarat became more and more talk of the town as Modi started staging himself as the future leader of India. On the other hand, UPA government was heading to its second term; with no strong leadership after Atal Bihari Vajpayee; BJP was in a chaotic transformation from the pre freedom leaders like L.K Advani to post freedom leaders like Narendra Modi. Meanwhile UPA had its bumpy ride of its second phase with 2008 credit crunch dragging the country into grinding halt of GDP growth.
By 2012, Modi and his team was successful to put himself in the position where they can bargain and lobby the high command of BJP to bring him as the face of prime ministerial candidate. UPA unable to deliver the promises made on election campaign and Anna movement ‘India against corruption’ gave Modi a ground to kickstart his PM election campaign. India against corruption was a movement where all indian youths came together to protest against the corruption scandal of UPA government and black money held in offshore bank a/c.
Modi with his clever tactic took the ownership of these agenda as his manifesto for the election campaign. He and his party was using a loophole of election commision law where no source needed to be disclosed for the amount less than 20000 INR. The election campaign portrait UPA and Gandhi family are the facilities of felony crime.
Like a master of the orchestra; Narendra Modi, engaged the whole BJP members along with RSS at the ground level. The engagement was fueled by the Anna moment’s youth voter who have no option than BJP to vote for. This result in the single party bringing the clear majority after 30 years. This is how the BJP government came to power leaded by Narendra Damodardas Modi. And the question lies ahead will this phenomenon be repeated in 2019 too?
