Rot in the Age of Hyper-Leadership

https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/bhagwat-sets-off-jitters-at-75-bjp-shift-towards-empowering-youth-125071101485_1.html

 

 

I write in response to your article published on July 12th titled “Bhagwat Sets Off Jitters at 75”, which — in the grand tradition of a now increasingly pliant Indian press — offers a garland of praise to the BJP for its so-called “robust and meritocratic HR system.” A bolder claim hasn't been made since North Korea declared its leader invented the hamburger.

The author’s argument rests on three wobbly legs — “retention,” “ideological glue,” and “absence of dynastic politics.” It is, essentially, an attempt to evaluate the BJP using the yardstick of the Congress’ failings, rather than the BJP’s own performance. That may pass for analysis on television panels, but not in serious discourse.

Let’s apply a real organisational development (OD) lens to the party — one that includes Recruitment, Retention, Promotion, Diversity, Evaluation, and Succession. Even a modest student of political science would tell you that parties, like people, go through life cycles. The BJP today is in its middle-aged spread phase: bloated, smug, and increasingly forgetful of what made it agile in its youth.

Start with Diversity. The BJP is a one-note party. Of its 240 MPs in Lok Sabha, not one is a Muslim. In states it governs, Muslims are nowhere in the legislative or authoritative picture. Two token Sikhs (one of whom is a Congress defector & other an opportunist former bureaucrat) and the lone Christian George Kurian do not constitute inclusion. Gender diversity? Besides Nirmala Sitharaman, the women in the cabinet are largely invisible — tokens, not trailblazers. Scheduled Castes and OBCs may occupy seats, but how many hold power beyond ceremonial garlands and WhatsApp forwards?

Recruitment and Promotion? The Economic Times reported that 25% of the BJP's 2024 Lok Sabha candidates were turncoats — political refugees from parties hounded by ICE (Income Tax, CBI, ED). The BJP doesn’t recruit; it absorbs — by force, by fear, or by file. The Prajwal Revanna scandal, where a rape-accused MP was openly endorsed by the PM for one extra seat in Karnataka, should be enough to disqualify the BJP from any conversation around “merit.”

As for promotion, the party hasn’t been able to elect a new President in 13 months. The search for someone pliable enough to please both Modi and the RSS is a Kafkaesque exercise. Despite 45 years in existence and 14 party presidents, the party has had only two sets of public faces i.e the Vajpayee – Adwani era and now Modi-Shah. Others have been reduced to footnotes. Even M. Venkaiah Naidu, once a stalwart, has been quietly airbrushed out of the frame.

Retention? Yes, many stay — because there's nowhere else to go. Or because the sword of Enforcement hangs heavy. It’s not loyalty; it’s insurance. Retention without free speech is just captivity.

And let’s not even pretend the BJP has any real succession planning. The article raises the question of whether Mr. Modi will step aside at 75, as per the RSS's unwritten age rule. To which I say: the question is irrelevant. Cults don’t have succession plans — they have crises when the Dear Leader departs. And make no mistake, the BJP is no longer a political party; it is a Modi-centric personality cult with hashtags, not policies.

Now to the crown jewel — youth empowerment. Really? Are T. Raja Singh, K. Annamalai, Madhavi Latha, and Tejasvi Surya your poster children? Raja Singh is known more for hate speech than any policy position. He speaks of bulldozing tombs and targeting Afzal Khan’s imaginary descendants. Annamalai, in place of governance, offers us histrionics — threatening public floggings and brandishing a watch. Madhavi Latha, in a campaign stunt, pointed a bow at a mosque. Tejasvi Surya spends more time on Twitter than Parliament. If these are the future, may the past rest in peace.

Let’s look at governance. S. Jaishankar’s foreign policy has been a festival of flops — from Nepal to Maldives to China. Rajnath Singh presided over Op Sindoor, one of the most opaque and strategically dubious operations in recent military memory. Piyush Goyal appears increasingly irritated with the business community, perhaps because they’ve begun asking inconvenient questions about growth, taxation, and capital flight.

Which brings me to data — or the lack of it. Farmers' suicide data is missing. Disaggregated unemployment figures are now a state secret. Economic growth, according to JNU professor Arun Kumar, is overstated, with the informal sector having been wiped clean by demonetisation and GST. The government’s refusal to publish real data, or the methods behind it, tells its own tale.

Once again, we’re seeing a pattern in Indian political commentary: mistake control for competence. It’s true the BJP doesn’t operate like the Gandhi family playbook. BJP doesn’t have a dynasty. It has a deity. And his name is Narendra Modi.

BJP isn’t a model of political organisation. It’s a PR operation masquerading as a movement, with a shrinking inner circle and an expanding echo chamber. When Modi turns 75, India won’t just face a question of succession. It will face a reckoning — of what happens when personality overtakes policy, and politics becomes a tool for power, not purpose.