(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)Sharing a stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Chief minister of Haryana, and Hemant Soren, Chief Minister of Jharkhand, found themselves being booed in their own states. A similar though not exact experience has caused Prithviraj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, to stay away from public events featuring Modi. Hooda and Chavan belong to the Congress, Soren to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, a Congress ally.
The Congress has accused the BJP of "politicising" the Prime Minister's official engagements. It has charged the BJP with instigating its supporters to heckle Congress chief ministers. Finally, a section of senior Congress politicians have sought a boycott of Modi's events by party chief ministers.
While that is the state of play, how does one assess it? For a start, it is entirely to be expected Modi's popularity currently surpasses that of any other politician in the country, including long-standing chief ministers like Hooda. He has just won a big election and is riding a wave, particularly after his Independence Day speech.
That means Modi will be cheered wherever he goes. It does not, of course, mean those who share the dais with him will be jeered. One doesn't flow from the other. So either the chief ministers being booed are truly unpopular, or they are victims of a conspiracy. The Congress believes it is the latter.
If all this is indeed a conspiracy, then it means the BJP is embedding its workers in large crowds and purposefully attempting to boo the chief ministers to make Modi look good. The question that follows is: how come the hapless Chief Ministers didn't anticipate this? How come they didn't have the political intelligence to know what the BJP was up to? How come they didn't embed their own workers (Congress, JMM and so on) in the crowds and resort to a counter-mobilisation?
The more pertinent point is all three states mentioned above see elections in the coming weeks. The Congress and its allies are predicted to lose, and the BJP is expected to do well. The jeering and mocking of the chief ministers reflects that political reality. If Modi shares a stage with Naveen Patnaik in Bhubaneswar or with Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, it is far less likely that the Chief Ministers of Orissa and West Bengal will be booed. They have demonstrated their popularity in recent elections.
Finally, why is the Congress showing such immaturity and impatience? Today Modi's appeal is at an all-time high and he is in the midst of his honeymoon. His party is the front-runner in the next round of state elections. The Congress, on the other hand, is in dire straits.
Let's take a snapshot. In December 2013, the Congress had governments in five states that were crucial to its profile and political fund-raising: Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka. In December 2014, it could be in power in just one of these states: Karnataka. That's how devastating these 12 months would have been for the party. For the Congress, 2014 is proving to be
annus horribilis.
In such a predicament, the Congress should lie low, concentrate on regrouping to the degree it can and wait for Modi's government to make mistakes and inevitably face bouts of public anger. Rather than show such forbearance, the party is behaving like a cat on a hot tin roof. Does it really expect to win friends and sympathisers by boycotting official events of the Prime Minister of India? As the Sanskrit proverb goes,
vinaash kaale, vipreet buddhi!
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