Parliament elections are a year and a half away – too long and too short a time, depending on how one looks at it. But, the build-up for the coming polls has begun at different levels, including also in the holding of Yatras. The rebranding of a regional outfit, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi that rules one of the two Telugu states into Bharat Rashtra Samithi on Dasara day this week is a significant development. The professed aim is to defeat Narendra Modi and the BJP and ‘grab the gaddi’ in Delhi. The obvious motivation for Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is to try his own luck in Delhi and simultaneously create a space for his son, state minister KT Rama Rao, to take over as CM. Being in power for eight years, he’s flush with loads of funds. Yet, problems are he has no national clout and the EC has strict rules to designate a party as national.
Another regional chieftain in the form of Bihar’s Nitish Kumar has begun sniffing around Delhi. West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee is perhaps bewildered by the entry of two more ‘rivals’ into the fray for the top chair in Delhi. With central agencies arresting some of her close associates carrying hoarded currency and Banerjee’s attempt to turn her party into a national entity having faced odds, she is tamed a bit. It is no secret that all these CMs fancy the PM chair for the main reason that Narendra Modi showed them the way through his status upgradation in 2014. Modi by himself would not have made it to the PM post had he not had the backing from a well-entrenched national party like the BJP and full backing from the RSS. Modi by himself would have fallen by the wayside had he not had such a solid backing. He has been able to run a stable governance system at the Centre for the past eight years due to the cohesion within the BJP and the influence that the RSS has on the party.
What the regional leaders hope to do is cobble a pre-poll or post-poll alliance of regional parties with or without the backing of the Congress to form the next central ministry. Non-Congress, non-BJP coalition experiments have been a failure in Delhi’s power edifice. A strong national party must take the lead. Other governments lasted only for months as the egos of the regional leaders clashed instead of a convergence of minds on leading the nation. Their tendency has been to wield power instead of govern. They aim for their personal growth at the expense of the nation’s growth.
