As polls loom, BJP set to hardsell notebandi

The two-day BJP national executive meeting that ended in New Delhi Saturday may be seen in the current political context as a move to rally the party organisation on the eve of Assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh, which the BJP wants to make the scaffolding for success in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The much-hyped economic policy measure of demonetisation, propounded and steamrolled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally, had not so far been officially endorsed by the party. That ritual was formalised at the national executive.

The prominence given to demonetisation at the conclave makes it apparent the BJP has now owned the programme — which is now no longer an item of government policy, to be handled by the official machinery alone — and is ready to gamble its poll fortunes on it. The BJP, or for that matter the Modi government, is evidently not bothered with the economic consequences of demonetisation, should these turn out to be negative as some anticipate. These will become clear after the election battle has been won or lost. The focus, clearly for now, is on hardselling demonetisation to the voting public.

Its virtues are being extolled sky-high. Fundamentally, it is being packaged for electoral purposes as a visionary pro-poor move that strikes at the black money hoarder and the corrupt. This is an indirect means to reassure the majority of voters, who work hard to make ends meet, that the government is trying to strike at fat cats because the Modi regime is on their side. The irony can’t be missed, for this government’s policies have generally been pro-rich.

But it’s hard to best the BJP in effective propaganda. Mr Modi continues to be pushed as a poor man who made his way in the world, though the facts are contrary. If in the last Lok Sabha election it was the “shining Gujarat model” that was hyped up, it became evident afterwards that this was nothing but the victory of false propaganda.

The PM’s communication skills are enviable, as he showed once again at Saturday’s BJP meeting. The BJP also promoted the fact that ordinary people stood in never-ending queues, and didn’t rise in revolt, as a “sacred movement” to cleanse the system to advance “the poor’s welfare”. But as a party, the BJP hardly ever lets an election campaign go without someone raising the communal pitch.

The party’s Unnao MP, Sakshi Maharaj, filled that slot this time as he went at Muslims at a conference in Meerut for producing too many children, although the latest data shows their birth rates have actually declined. His party has dissociated itself from these comments, but in poll-bound UP, the signalling has served its purpose.