BJP's return to roots, or to RSS? -Governance Now

BJP's return to roots, or to RSS?

BJP's national council reflects the tightening grip of the Sangh Parivar

Ajay Singh | February 17, 2010

At Indore, the BJP's national council is displaying an unmistakable imprint of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. For a beginning, tents have been erected to house 3,000-odd delegates away from the city and its five-star luxuries. But tents are only a glimpse of the party's vision to take leaders back to the roots. The entire area has been converted into a model village where delegates are living close to nature with animals and birds. Some tribals and snake charmers have been brought from neighbouring areas to give the whole tenement a natural look. This council assumes significance in view of the fact that it is set to ratify Nitin Gadkari's election as party president. And Gadkari is more than eager to display his loyalties to the core values of the RSS which harps swadeshi and austerity in public life.

But insiders say that the whole arrangement is turning out to be quite expensive. For example, Ananth Kumar who came to oversee the arrangement chose to fly back to Bangalore on a state plane accompanied by a state minister to legitimise his journey. Similarly, the entire state machinery has been mobilised to create an ideal village which is only in the Sangh Parivar's dream. In fact, the party's Indore national council once again exposes the existential dilemma of the Sangh Parivar and the BJP. With the RSS firming up its grip over the BJP, the party's political strategy is being charted by die-hard pracharaks who are completely out of sync with ground realities. What is surprising is the silence and total capitulation of the party's new leadership to the whims and fancies of these pracharaks.

Comments

Other News

Climate change is stealing sleep

Climate change has at least doubled the temperature-related sleep loss across 1,338 major cities worldwide over the past five decades, highlighting an emerging but often overlooked public health consequence of rising global temperatures. A new study by Climate Central estimates that between 2020 and

Cabinet approves Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme

The union cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi has approved the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) with a budgetary outlay of Rs 62,500 crore. It aims to further scale up the production, deepen domestic value addition, strengthen supply chain resilience, enhance global competitiveness. It

Building infrastructure is only half the job

Recent stories of stolen railway wires, disappearing communication towers and missing public infrastructure are often treated as bizarre law-and-order failures of India. Yet they raise a more fundamental question. Why does the State often discover the disappearance of a public asset only after it has alrea

New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific strategy enters a new phase

India appears to be investing fresh dynamism in its Indo-Pacific strategy. At the time when the US, under president Donald Trump, has adopted a conciliatory approach towards China and has changed the name of America’s Indo-Pacific Command to just Pacific Command, India has quietly moved towards con

CAG flags major fiscal lapses in Maharashtra

Maharashtra`s fiscal management has come under sharp scrutiny after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, in its State Finances Audit Report for 2024-25, flagged significant budgetary inefficiencies, accounting irregularities, understatement of key fiscal indicators and widespread governanc

The health sector research we are not doing

Some neglect is loud. This kind is quiet. It sits in research never commissioned, data never collected, questions never asked. In South Asia, that quiet has let the region’s worst health problems stay understudied, underfunded, and out of sight of those who could act.