Why Does Its Manifesto Make Not Just the BJP but Everyone Else Too So Nervous?

BJP has finally released a Manifesto on the election day. The Congress party and others have questioned the delay and BJP has come with enough plausible explanations which have been ridiculed by various opponents.

As one congress leader put it, If the BJP can’t take out a Manifesto in time how are they going to manage the country’s affairs?

But  the real reason for the BJP to be so defensive and nervous about publishing its manifesto well before the start of the election instead of putting it off till the last moment is in the Manifesto itself.

Perhaps the simplest of explanation is that with the reference to Ayodhya and Article 370, the BJP Manifesto resembles the proverbial Wolf in Sheep’s clothing.

The BJP was not sure if, for the one billion voters of India, it will look anything but a dressed up version of the old wolf they have shunned twice. The party obviously didn’t want to scare them away by the inevitable media exposure, scrutiny and debate the Manifesto would have generated in the crucial weeks before the election.

All stock explanations for the last minute publishing and brushing away by its spoke persons become suspect just for the presence of those contentious issues, without which the BJP’s raison d’être  would have become questionable.

One incredibly funny argument put forth by the BJP for the last minute release of the Manifesto is that it wanted the voters to remember its promises on the way to the polling booth!

That gives some credence to the claim of Congress’s Abhishek  Singhvi that BJP has taken the whole country for granted. In fact the BJP can be accused not just for bending the rules of the nation but also for questioning its intelligence.

The reality is that the BJP has indeed taken an enormous risk by including those contentious issues, especially if it happened after intense and protracted debate within the party, as is being reported.

In fact the BSP leader Mayavathi has recently articulated the uneasy question lurking in the minds of a large number of Indians at least in her recent speech. Are we going to see an India akin to the one the world saw in 1947 if BJP comes to power with Narendra Modi as its Prime Minister?

It is not just Mayavathi who seems to think so. Numerous political leaders of all parties including the BJP itself and various prominent persons of India has expressed the same concern time and again, though no one seems to have declared it as a definite outcome other than the blunt leaser of the BSP itself.

No doubt, the BJP top brass is well aware of this eventuality, which they have willingly or reluctantly embraced in their quest for power. By moulding and releasing the Manifesto in its current form, they  seem to have consciously pulled out the sacks and put them out for drying hoping no one will notice them on the way to their polling booths.

Perhaps they are right. In a country where the party leaders themselves get to read their Manifestos days after they are released, the average voter who can barely read his ration card has no way of knowing what his Manifesto really means.

For BJP, just keeping their agenda written but hidden from its voters will give them the blank cheque they need to draw what they want when the bank opens with their account.