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Kejriwal was obviously not perceived as such by the people of Delhi and I am not here to discuss Vir Sanghvi's character. It does not matter as far as his article is concerned.

It does. People of shady character pontificating on issues like decency and values make anything coming from their mouths worthless. I am not in the habit of taking sermons on kindness from the likes of ISIS. Likewise.

The ppl who vote for Hindutva will always vote BJP ,does bjp wants votes for development ? the swing votes ? the deciders ? those make you win elections like it did in 2014. BJP should concentrate on it.

People will abandon BJP if BJP abandons the cause of Hindutva. It is just another secular party if not for Hindutva.
 
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Bihar results should give PM Modi reason to pause and rethink
  • Vir Sanhgvi

Snap judgements are dangerous and nearly always wrong. So, all those who want to treat the Bihar assembly election as a referendum on the central government should ease up on the schadenfreude. An assembly election is not necessarily a verdict on the performance of the Centre. All the opinion polling evidence suggests that Narendra Modi is still the most popular leader in India. There is no obvious alternative to him as prime minister in any party and were a parliamentary election to be held tomorrow, the BJP would still emerge as the single-largest party in the new Lok Sabha.

That said, there is no denying that the humiliating defeat in Bihar will damage Modi largely because he had invested so much of his credibility in the election, campaigning extensively across the state and not nominating a chief ministerial candidate, to whom some of the blame could be shifted — as it was to Kiran Bedi after the Delhi debacle.

The extent of the defeat is still to sink in. But it bears remembering that both Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Lalu Prasad’s RJD individually got more seats than the BJP could muster. And the Congress, dismissed as a joke by BJP campaigners, won 27 seats (at the time of going to press). More worrying is that the BJP did not sense that a debacle was imminent. When early trends (based mainly on postal ballots) seemed to give the BJP an advantage, its spokesmen fell over each other on TV channels to praise the electoral savvy of Amit Shah, who had engineered this massive victory. When reality dawned, the party reacted with shock and surprise.

The prime minister does not like to concede points to his critics or to change course. But this electoral disaster should give him reason to pause and rethink his strategy.

First of all, he needs to stop seeing himself as prime campaigner and recognise that he is actually prime minister. His stated aim may be to create a Congress-mukt Bharat where the BJP is the dominant force. But that’s not what he was elected to do. The mandate was for development, not for endless campaigning. And as the delivery on the development agenda is delayed, his passion for campaigning is beginning to annoy the electorate. Worse still, from Modi’s point of view, is that the campaigning is not working. Both Delhi and Bihar are deeply embarrassing rebuffs to a prime minister who is always in election mode.

Secondly, he needs to rethink his messaging. He won the Lok Sabha poll by first listing the failures of UPA 2 and by denigrating his opponents. He then presented himself as the alternative, asking for votes on the basis of his leadership qualities and personal charisma.
It is an approach that works well when a) the incumbent government is seen as incompetent or corrupt and b) when people have only Modi’s record as chief minister of Gujarat to judge him by. But when his opponents are not viewed as dishonest or venal — as neither Arvind Kejriwal or Nitish Kumar is — this approach backfires.
Moreover, people now have Modi’s record as prime minister to judge him by and are less impressed by his claims that he has all the solutions.

Consequently, the Gogia Pasha-style campaign, where people are told that if they vote for Modi all their problems will magically disappear, has stopped working.

Thirdly, there is the decency factor. The BJP’s time in Delhi has seen a sharp decline in the level of national discourse. It isn’t just the abusive trolls on social media, some of whom Modi himself follows or fraternises with. It is also the arrogance and offensive smugness of the BJP’s TV spokespeople. And it is elements within the Parivar who are happy to denigrate women or launch veiled (and sometimes not so veiled) attacks on Muslims. At a time when the prime minister wants to focus on development, his supporters focus on ghar wapsi. When the prime minister talks about the advancement of people, his party talks about the protection of the cow.

The atmosphere has now turned so ugly that many of those who supported Modi because they believed he would lead a triumphant India into the 21st century now wonder why he does not speak out against those who are dragging India back to the Middle Ages.

In contrast to this unpleasantness and bigotry — much of which found its way into the Bihar campaign — the word most often used to describe Nitish Kumar is ‘decent’. While Modi fought a high-cost, high-voltage, high-rhetoric, high-in-a-helicopter campaign, Nitish went quietly from village to village, addressing relatively small meetings and refrained from personal attacks or any kind of rudeness. Bihar is not Madison Square Garden and Nitish’s low-key, unflashy style connected better with voters.

Everything we have seen suggests that Modi regards stubbornness as a synonym for courage. He will never yield to pressure. He won’t let anyone resign (not even Gajendra Chauhan!). So, it is unlikely that he will pay heed to the murmurings in his party about Amit Shah’s stewardship of the Bihar campaign.

But he must know, deep within his heart, that things are not going according to plan. The euphoria of the 2014 victory is fast dissipating. His own charisma is no longer enough to win elections. And as intolerance and unpleasantness mar all discourse in India, he must be concerned with the turn events have taken.


So far, he has followed a policy of benign neglect towards the bigots and haters in his Parivar. But as the promised economic recovery is still to arrive and electoral humiliations rock his government, even Modi must begin to wonder if it is time for a course correction.





He is too shrewd a politician not to recognise that it all threatens to go badly wrong. And he is smart enough to know that only he can intervene and turn the tide.

Bihar results should give PM Modi reason to pause and rethink | columns | Hindustan Times






When the prime minister talks about the advancement of people, his party talks about the protection of the cow.



LOLz funny...
 
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It does. People of shady characters pontificating on issues like decency and values make anything coming from their mouths worthless. I am not in the habit of taking sermons on kindness from the likes of ISIS. Likewise.

You are free to make your own choices, nobody is forcing you to take anything from anyone -- no one really cares.
 
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When the prime minister talks about the advancement of people, his party talks about the protection of the cow.



LOLz funny...

Becoming Christian is like a disease I suppose. All care and concern towards animal welfare just goes for a toss. LOLz funny.

You are free to make your own choices, nobody is forcing you to take anything from anyone -- no one really cares.

You can say you don't care. You can't speak for others. I don't care whether you care. Just put forth my view of the value of the article you posted since this is a public forum.
 
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Or they care for the animals they don't eat :lol:

They don't care for anyone. Not even humans given how Christians are butchering thousands of Muslims everywhere. Leave them alone and very soon every Christian sect will be the throat of another Christian sect disavowing them as heretics.
 
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You can say you don't care. You can't speak for others. I don't care whether you care. Just put forth my view of the value of the article you posted since this is a public forum.

I was also putting forth my view. Thank you!
 
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Modi took out 30 campaign speeches, compared to the hundreds taken by Lalu and Nitish. But because there was no real CM face or figure, or anyone else really from BJP that was recognizable in Bihar it ended up failing spectacularly, you are right. Atrociously bad politics. Hopefully BJP refocuses and starts fielding more local candidates that can appeal to local politics and caste instead of just relying on Modi to do everything. His star power can't win local elections without support.
Neither was in J&K, in Maharashtra, AP, and many election.. But they performed well in those states, din't they?
 
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People will abandon BJP if BJP abandons the cause of Hindutva. It is just another secular party if not for Hindutva.

That's an incorrect assessment hindutva issues most of them are legal issues, one can do them without chest thumping while focusing on economy and swing voters.

hindutva issues will remain untouched if BJP is no longer at the center.
 
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The ppl who vote for Hindutva will always vote BJP ,does bjp wants votes for development ? the swing votes ? the deciders ? those make you win elections like it did in 2014. BJP should concentrate on it.

BJP will have to make a choice here. As some of their supporters are suggesting, they should either go full Hindutva or they should tone down and focus on the real issues they promised during the 2014 elections. The middle path seems to be not working very well, both groups of people are unhappy with it for opposite reasons. It's their choice and the people of the country would let them know what they prefer in 2019.
 
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That's an incorrect assessment hindutva issues most of them are legal issues, one can do them without chest thumping while focusing on economy and swing voters.

hindutva issues will remain untouched if BJP is no longer at the center.

They are not just legal issues. Correcting distortion of history was not a legal issue. Beef is not a legal issue. Freeing up temples from govt control and education system from minority bias is not a legal issue. I can go on and on. These are fundamental issues which strike at the consciousness of our civilization. Makes or breaks a nation. Economy will always remain a parallel concern for some. Biharis gave a middle finger to economy for example.
 
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BJP will have to make a choice here. As some of their supporters are suggesting, they should either go full Hindutva or they should tone down and focus on the real issues they promised during the 2014 elections. The middle path seems to be not working very well, both groups of people are unhappy with it for opposite reasons. It's their choice and the people of the country would let them know what they prefer in 2019.

It will take exactly ONE incident of some Muslim yahoos going full retard to precipitate exactly what is being orchestrated.

Cue : Indian Patriot and his ilk.
 
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Neither was in J&K, in Maharashtra, AP, and many election.. But they performed well in those states, din't they?

BJP strategy is simple and the right one. Go without a local leader and after a win place an RSS guy there. Any other strategy will backfire just like Delhi did. People used to think no end of Kiran Bedi. She was the popular figure in people's imagination and everyone thought a progressive modern woman like her would be just what Delhi was waiting for. We all saw what happened and what kind of leader Delhi ended up with.
 
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BJP will have to make a choice here. As some of their supporters are suggesting, they should either go full Hindutva or they should tone down and focus on the real issues they promised during the 2014 elections. The middle path seems to be not working very well, both groups of people are unhappy with it for opposite reasons. It's their choice and the people of the country would let them know what they prefer in 2019.

Its just one election voted along caste lines, people are thinking to much into it. There is no reason to believe Govt. cannot follow both. Economic progress and development is going good, just the marketing is weak.
 
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