BJP Future - 4

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The results of the latest round of infighting within the BJP is out.According to the Economic Times of date :->
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Rajnath’s team may not return winners



Our Political Bureau NEW DELHI




The ‘Indiresan principle’ has been vindicated once again. The former IIT-M director’s formulations on leadership is proving to be correct to a T as the BJP undertakes changes in its organisational hierarchy.
First a recap of the Indiresan principle. According to PV Indiresan, the chief architect of President APJ Abdul Kalam’s pet project ‘Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) “leaders” in various fields are a failure because of their inability to undertake the basic task — to lead. In his writings, Indiresan made three formulations. One, if you have good assistants, 99% of your work is done. But if you have bad assistants, your work doubles. Second, many people are scared of hiring competent people. Second-raters recruit third-raters as they are scared of first-raters. And third, a good administrator’s job is of getting things done by skilled people.
The changes that BJP president Rajnath Singh made in his team, even the party’s rivals admit, reinforces the relevance of the Indiresan principle. Mr Singh, who took charge of the party with a promise to “connect” with people — implicit in this is the admission that the BJP was rebuffed in the last Lok Sabha polls because its leadership moved away from the voter — was expected to put in a new team that will reassure the cadre and the constituency outside it about some purposeful steps on the part of the party.
The BJP has, for the past few years, been in the throes of an internal turmoil. Naturally, there was talk that the party president will attempt to put an end to internal rivalries and ego clashes.
That was not all. 2007 presents a crucial opportunity to the BJP to show that it has not lost its winning habit. While the election process is already underway in Punjab and Uttarakhand, elections are round the corner in politically-crucial Uttar Pradesh. Towards the end of the year, its stronghold of Gujarat will be going to the polls and it cannot afford to lose the state as it will be seen as a no-confidence on the BJP.
But when he recast his team, Mr Singh showed undue anxiety to prove the Indiresan principle correct rather than address the immediate task before him — set his house in order to face the electoral challenges.
<b> First, Mr Singh cut Narendra Modi, a leader of the party’s big league, to size by denying him a place in the central parliamentary board. Dissidence against Mr Modi had almost vanished from even newspaper columns. But Mr Singh ensured that the dissidence finds a receptive quarter in Delhi. Mr Singh rubbed this in by appointing a nominee of Modi’s rival, Keshubhai Patel, as the party’s youth wing chief. </b> Mr Singh’s second target was Arun Jaitley. He stripped Mr Jaitley of the charge of the chief spokesman and gave the task of handling media to three men, who are yet to display any potential to undertake the task.
If Jaitley was removed for furthering cronyism, Mr Modi’s place is now occupied Tawarchand Gehlot and a one-constituency leader, Ananth Kumar. Meanwhile, neo-convert Arif Mohd Khan is continuing to get a raw deal. Mr Khan, the best Muslim face the party can boast of, appears to have no utility for Rajnath’s BJP. He has been retained as an ordinary member of the national executive.
Second raters — who tend to hire third raters at the cost of first raters — may not quite aid the job assigned to the BJP president. And it is the RSS that seems to be acknowledging the problem and how much it reflects the tenets of the Indiresan Principle. “... the BJP does not face as much a threat from the Congress, the Communists or any other socalled secular party as it faces from internal dissatisfaction, infighting, and from scattered leaders with haughty temperament. If they are controlled, everything will be under control,” an editorial in the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya said on Tuesday.
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If such infights continue till the run up to the next general elections, it is unlikely that the BJP will be able to make an impressive showing at the polls.