When your diehard supporters become your liability

The 3 state set back to the BJP has kept the news channels alive with all sorts of analysis and dissection through their own sets of political pundits. Politics is not a platform where one admits one’s mistakes but I hope the closed-door ‘chintan baithaks’ will at least bring out the truth. For, acceptance of mistakes is the first step to success.  

Four years back, the BJP came in with a thumping majority and with lots of expectations. All these 4 years -  the common man, the so-called educated, urban, middle-class Indian has shown extreme patience with some irritants like high petrol price; high NPAs with the Banks that took away a major portion of the tax that he remitted in all honesty; some ugly social incidents that he discounted as more hype than truth; giving up on some subsidies as a contribution to a social cause; inconveniences of demonetization as a bold step in the right direction and many more.

This middle class Indian – primarily a working class group - has generally been apolitical but has supported a forward looking, honest party and has stood behind a hard-working, well-meaning Premier. This group has no permanent following and no hard biases.

He is not a ‘Bhakta’ but applauds good governance and is appreciative of fact that the path to good governance goes through some inconveniences and demands a few sacrifices. But he is very objective in his assessment.  He also maintains a stack of his expectations from the Government. Good governance, zero-corruption, stable economy, infra development, national pride and social equilibrium are all part of this stack. And above all, he seeks a safe living for himself and for his near and dear ones.

The results in Madhya Pradesh show that the BJP was just short of 36000 votes overall, as compared to the Congress. And the number of NOTA votes were about 1.5% - that would translate to somewhere in the range of 4 to 7.5 Lakh votes, depending on the percentage of voting.  As it appears, these fence sitters have made a big difference to the final results. Who are these fence sitters?  Is this a group of these apolitical common men? Who do not want to commit the past mistakes of bringing back a Congress government but are somewhat disappointed with the current dispensation.

This apolitical common man has immense patience. He doesn’t make noise but is not a mute spectator either. He is not a diehard ‘Bhakta’ but does not desist from giving a pat on the back.  He is not a zealot but his silent retreat from the polling booth will be deafening.  Today, he has only got on to the fence riding on NOTA and has rung the warning bell. Tomorrow, he might cross over to the other side and that would be a lethal blow. The ‘Bhakta’ is loud and is irrational - he can give a wrong impression of large scale approval. This objective, apolitical supporter might just whisper. The party should keep its ears on the ground to listen and to ensure the misleading cheers of the intransigent supporter do not drown these sane whispers.