Modi and BJP fading away in Hindi heartland

In 2014-15 BJP president Amit Shah's proclamed an uninterrupted BJP rule at the Centre for the next 50 years. Even those who factored in unforeseen political challenges had little doubt that the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah would have an easy ride at least for 15 years. But such conviction is a thing of the past. These observations were made by a senior BJP leader from UP within days after the BJP suffered shock defeats in the byelections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. UP CM Yogi Adityanath, the BJP's latest mascot candidly admitted that they had been done in by overconfidence. 

• As in March 2018, BJP is in power 15 states and shares power in 5 other states. While 3 states are in Congress fold, 6 states are ruled by regional parties.
• Despite its massive presence in the country, today BJP is trembling with negative vibrations across the nation and elections for 5 states are slated for 2018 and general election for 2019 and Modi is desperately searching for a magic wand, that will work.
• In a span of 10 days, BJP suffered stinging defeats in UP’s Gorakhpur and Phulpur, constituencies held earlier by CM Adityanath and DyCM KP Maurya. While Tripura was wrested by BJP ending the 25-year-old Left Front regime, BJP surrendered their 27-year-long  domination of Gorakhpur to a loose alliance of the SP and BSP. In Bihar, revived alliance with the JDU did not bring any benefit as RJD retained the Araria LS constituency and the Jehanabad Assembly seat. Indeed, you never can take the Indian electorate for granted.
• In the RS polls, BJP’s strength in UP Assembly assured its victory in 8 seats, but it managed to win another seat by engineering cross-voting from the opposition to ensure the BSP candidate’s defeat. Managing a victory in a RS election through backroom manoeuvres is in no way a measure of public opinion.
• The reports from the Hindi heartland States of UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, MP and many more affirm that the popular mood is definitely turning against the BJP. The party is witnessing a steady erosion of support on account of agrarian crisis, the economic hardships on account of demonetisation and GST reforms, and the general failure to live up to the high expectations generated through the rhetoric of leaders like Modi. There is little doubt that this is bound to reflect in reduction of seats for the BJP in the 2019 general election.
• The fact of the matter is voters in the Hindi heartland States are fed up with BJP and they need to face it squarely without taking recourse to convoluted logic and lame excuses. The vote share of the BJP fell by 1,04,495 in Gorakhpur from the 2014 count and by a massive 2,20,102  in Phulpur.
• It is more daunting for the BJP since a mere arithmetical aggregation of SP and BSP votes of the 2017 Assembly elections shows the two parties ahead in as many as 50 of the 80 LS seats in the State. If this arithmetic is getting supplemented by an emotive appeal, a potential SP-BSP alliance will make rapid strides in UP’s electoral politics. Projections on the basis of a cumulative vote share assessment of the 2017 UP Assembly election results are that the SP-BSP combine has a lead of 1.45 lakh votes across 57 LS seats. The BJP and its allies lead in 23 seats by 58,000 votes, a sharp fall from the 71 seats won by BJP and 2 seats won by its allies in 2014.
• Akhilesh Yadav, SP president and former UP CM is of the view that the voter dissatisfaction with the BJP regimes at the Centre and in the States is fast acquiring big proportions and is bound to spread nationally in due course. He opines that Gorakhpur and Phulpur were merely precursors. 
• Akhilesh Yadav said that efforts to portray the BJP defeats in Gorakhpur and Phulpur as the mere fallout of electoral arithmetic is a mechanistic assessment that fails to take into consideration the larger social, economic and political context marked by misrule, the human misery caused by that misrule.
• The TDP  decision to leave the NDA and move a no-confidence motion against the Modi government is another indication of BJP mishandling its NDA allies.
• The manner in which the BJP’s sought to counter the no-confidence motion underscore a sense of panic. The party seems to have unleashed the AIADMK, which has become completely servile to Modi and Shah after  Jayalalithaa’s death, and the TRS to continuously disrupt Parliament on some pretext or the other so that the no-confidence motion cannot be taken up. It seems that like the UPA-II, the Modi Ministry is desperately seeking to run away from parliamentary inspection. The debates on the no-confidence motion would have been telecast live and this too could have added to the government’s discomfiture. But such desperate filibustering will ultimately aggravate voter disenchantment with the Modi government.
• The opposition parties have reinforced attempts to rally anti-BJP forces. While the Congress laid out its plan of action for non-BJP coalition in a special plenary and others are seeking to stitch an alliance of regional parties and these are based on the premise that the BJP is no longer in the position of strength that it enjoyed in 2014. 
• In the RS election in UP, the SP. and the Congress had announced support to the BSP candidate but lost due to cross voting in favour of 9th BJP candidate. The BJP leadership saw in the situation a chance to make mischief between the allies to split them. However, in the press conference that Mayawati said that BSP saw through the BJP’s dirty tricks and vile political games and horse-trading and made it clear that the alliance would continue. 
• BJP and RSS knew that Yogi Adityanath’s stock had taken a big beating. Projected last year as a potential successor to Modi, he has been exposed as an inefficient and ordinary “non vote catcher” leader who cannot even retain his own pocket borough that he had literally lorded over for decades. That does strengthen the Modi-Shah duo as the only vote catcher in the BJP, but the Hindi heartland States account for approximately 200 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha.
• The BJP is known traditionally to be an urban-centric party. The low turnout in the urban areas in the Gorakhpur at 33% and Phulpur 31% was disconcerting in the context of electoral challenges. This showed that the rural antipathy towards the party continued, its urban core base was resolutely refusing to rally behind it. It remains to be seen how Modi and Shah will tackle this. Certainly empty rhetoric cannot contain these jolts and there is widespread agreement with this observation among the Sangh Parivar rank and file.

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Having not ruled the country during first two years and misruled the country with disruptive reforms without preparation and leaving all vulnerable people to their fate without any support, time is now for Modi and BJP to pay the price. No matter what he does, his graph will continue to plunge, an RSS survey has warned Modi. The only way to limit damages is to go for flash polls. That is almost certainty if Karnataka result stuns BJP, which is likely as per opinion polls. Arrogance and dictatorial attitudes will never pay. Consequences are inescapable. Modi's wrong behavior and non-performance and corruption & scams etc has no bounds, much worse than Congress and UPA. Modi must realize that empty rhetoric will not work all the times.

Gorakhpur tragedy

• On Aug 12, 2017, as many as 30 children, mostly infants, lost their lives due to encephalitis in a span of 48 hours at BRD Medical College Hospital, Gorakhpur. The death toll in the last five days is said to be 63. 
• Gorakhpur DM Rajeev Rautela said the cause of the deaths at the BRD Hospital was the disruption in the supply of liquid oxygen. Gorakhpur SP admitted that 21 children had died due to shortage of supply of liquid oxygen.
• BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj lashed out at Yogi Adityanth government by saying “One or two deaths in different, but 30 deaths is genocide.”
• UP’s health minister Siddharth Nath Singh said that no one died between 11:30 pm and 1:30 am on the night of Aug 10 in BRD Medical College Hospital when oxygen supply got disrupted. He further stated that deaths were not due to lack of oxygen but due to other causes. Daily footfall is about 4,000-5,000 patients in BRD and average daily death count is around 20 in BRD in August. This is to explain and not create a panic the way it is being created.  The Opposition said the government’s denial of any deaths due to oxygen shortage was a cover-up. 
• Opposition said Siddharth Nath Singh should have resigned taking moral responsibility like his grandfather Lal Bahadur Shastri did as railways minister after a train accident. I have no issues in taking moral responsibility but I am not the relevant minister, Siddharth Nath Singh replied.
• The Lucknow based firm Pushpa Sales, at the centre of the controversy over disruption of oxygen supply because of non-payment of dues, which had entered into an agreement with the hospital in 2014, had sent as many as 14 reminders to the administration since Feb 2017. The outstanding dues were about Rs.68 lakhs.
• Even while claiming the disruption in oxygen supply is not the reason for the deaths, the police has raided the office of the oxygen supplier.
• Suspended BRD Medical College principal, Rajeev Mishra, says he wrote his resignation prior to suspension taking responsibility of the deaths of innocent children.
• Dr Kafeel Khan, who spent money from his own pocket, and transported three oxygen cylinders driving his own car from private nursing homes to BRD Medical College Hospital on August 10th night and saved lives of many children, when the supply of liquid oxygen allegedly stopped and became a hero on social media, has been removed from the post of nodal officer for the encephalitis ward without assigning any reason.
• Confirming his removal from the post, Dr Khan said "It's a smear campaign against me. I was only trying to help the children. I did everything from getting in touch with oxygen firms to ensuring prompt help to patients." 
• CM Yogi Adityanath said it is despicable if the deaths turned out to be caused due to oxygen shortage. He further stated that when there were already 52 cylinders in stock and Dr Kafeel Khan has not achieved much by bringing in 3 extra cylinders.
• The Chief Minister went there on Aug 9, but none of the doctors or the administration informed him about any such issue of alleged lack of supply of oxygen.
• Incidentally, Yogi Adityanath had been MP from Gorakhpur since 1998 and was very familiar with the problem of encephalitis. He has raised this issue in the past and demanded that it should be declared an epidemic. Adityanath as a parliamentarian has asked as many as 89 questions related to the health and family welfare ministry. Most of the victims are poor Dalits and Muslims.
• Yogi Adityanath is chief culprit of these deaths, for not releasing the funds to hospital since he took over as CM 4+ months ago.
• To live in denial is always the standard escape procedure of those in power. 
• Modi on many occasions in the past has spoken about 'Stand Up India.' Whether anyone sings or does not sing the national anthem in a cinema theatre on 15 August is not a matter of life and death. But when 30 kids die in 48 hours for lack of oxygen at a government hospital in the 70th year of Independence it is indeed so.

The fact is that what has happened in Gorakhpur isn’t merely about oxygen cylinders and unpaid bills but it is a symptom of many deeper problems. The problems and solutions are not new. India’s abysmally low public spending on healthcare explains why the country’s healthcare system is in a shambles. Most state-run facilities are so poorly managed that they aren’t really an option. Private facilities may offer services, but there are serious quality issues when it comes to the poor and less informed. The lack of political will to fix the healthcare system unfortunately means that Gorakhpur-like crises will continue to happen with morbid frequency across the country. 

BJP never accepts their failures and responsibilities*, but will definitely teaches others about nationalism and patriotism. CM or at least the health minister should take responsibility, accept the failure, resign and get out, if they have an iota of morality. I am sure they will come out with a cosmic theory blaming predecessor and publicize in Goebbels fashion and make it believe by Indians. Their troll brigade will make every one shut up in social media. 
*Modi was CM of Gujarat during the period of Gujarat Riots 2002, that lasted for 2 months and over 2000 Muslims were massacred, their women raped, their properties destroyed and lakhs of Muslims displaced and he has neither taken responsibility for the riots nor regretted it. And Modi is yet to accept Demonetization 2016 as 'failed adventure' that had created havoc in Indian economy. And so on.