Modi's BJP is like Congress, a grand old party of dynasty and scams

"Party with a Difference" — this tagline still features on Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP’s) website. Though it’s really tough to spot the difference. With Amit Shah as its president, BJP has become the world's largest party, according to its website, whose membership programme has often come into question.

In May 2014, when the BJP came to power with unprecedented majority and Narendra Modi was elected prime minister, it was expected that things would change and "The Party with a Difference" will work in a way ordinary citizens start observing the change.

Sadly, no such difference is visible despite the government completing two years and nine months in office.

Dynastic politics

The BJP has always accused the Congress, India’s oldest political party, of indulging in dynastic politics, but now it seems the ruling party is no different.

Most of BJP’s young MPs are in office because of the political weight of their parents and kin. Few such brand ambassadors of dynastic politics in the ruling party are Anurag Thakur (son of former CM of Himachal Pradesh Prem Singh Dhumal), Dushyant Singh (son of Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje, who is a daughter of late MP Vijaya Raje Scindia), Preetam Munde (daughter of Late Gopinath Munde, a stalwart of BJP's Maharashtra unit), Poonam Mahajan (daughter of late BJP minister Pramod Mahajan), Jayant Sinha (son of veteran BJP leader Yashwant Sinha), Abhishek Singh (son of Chattisgarh CM Raman Singh), Varun Gandhi (son of Maneka Gandhi and grandson of late prime minister and Congress leader Indira Gandhi) and power minister Piyush Goyal (son of late BJP minister Ved Prakash Goyal).

The list goes on when you dig deep into state-level political affairs.

If one goes through the party’s candidate list for the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, it becomes apparent that the "anti-dynasty" party has given around 60 tickets to politicians' children — the highest among all parties fighting elections.

Significantly, most of the coalition partners of the BJP, including PDP, Shiv Sena, Akali Dal and Apna Dal but BJP follow suit, but no sin in joining hands with them.

Free for all

It won’t be wrong to say that the BJP, led by the Modi-Shah duo, has become the "Ganga" of politics where everyone, despite differences in ideology, criminal background and corruption allegations, are allowed to bathe in the saffron waters.

Well before the 2014 general elections, several opportunistic politicians joined the BJP, got tickets and few of them even got the ministerial berths in the Modi government. This happened in a party which takes pride in calling itself cadre-based. 

A recent excellent demonstration of this form of politics was observed in UP and Uttarakhand where many heavyweights took a holy dip in saffron sea. One of the gems being Vijay Bahuguna, former CM of Uttarakhand, who was accused of corruption during the Kedarnath crisis by none other than BJP itself. All his sins have been washed away in Assembly elections 2017.

Swami Prasad Maurya is another example. He joined the BJP and managed to get an MLA ticket for himself as well as his son. He is joined by the likes of Yashpal Arya, Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Ravi Kishan.

Today's BJP, led by second-generation leaders, has demonstrated a new way to grab power. The model was first implemented at Arunachal Pradesh, where party has been successful in breaking the PPA government and managed to form its government by borrowing 33 MLAs from, guess who, the PPA!

The saffron party tried the same tactics to seize power in Uttarakhand, but Supreme Court intervened and the Congress government led by Harish Rawat was able to complete its tenure.

Nagaland too is seems to be on the verge of getting a BJP government. Political observers have remained clueless about how such model of acquiring power will help the world’s largest party take voters into confidence and push forward its ideology.

Governance policies

Both UPA and NDA follow the same path when it comes to environment clearance. PM Modi openly mocks Congress for launching a scheme like MNREGA by terming it a monument of the grand old party’s failure, but allots Rs 48,000 crore to the scheme.

As far as crony capitalism is concerned, there is no difference the UPA and NDA governments' awarding policies. Where the Ambanis were the core beneficiaries in the previous regime, Adani now leads from the front.

Another emerging capitalist is Baba Ramdev - his Patanjali group crosses milestones every single day during Modi’s rule and it is a well-established fact that the self-styled yoga guru campaigned for the BJP during the 2014 general elections.

Yes, there are few things the BJP government did differently, like rechristening the Yojana Aayog as Niti Aayog, replacing JNNURM with the smart cities project, turning the Nirmal Bharat Mission into the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Rajiv Gandhi Vidyutikaran Yojna to Deendayal Upadhyay Yojna and Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendra to Atal Seva Kenda.

Here too the only visible change is of names and titles while the core policy remains the same.

Awarding Rajya Sabha seats 

Narendra Modi as CM of Gujarat used to target journalists of favouring the Congress so the party could offer them Rajya Sabha seats. No one can deny that the Congress did so in the past.

But the BJP is no different in this aspect too as it has accommodated industrialists, journalists and some "angry" sidelined leaders in the Rajya Sabha.

The names include Subhash Chandra (Chairman, Essar Group and owner of Zee Media), Swapan Dasgupta (senior journalist), Ramesh Poddar (industralist), Vijay Goel (sidelined Delhi leader and notorious sports minister).

Core issues of BJP

The core ideology of BJP revolves around three major issues — the construction of Ram Mandir, the removal of Article 370 and realising the Uniform Civil Code.

For the top leadership, the construction of Ram Mandir is no more an issue it has now begun repeating the Congress' line of adhering to the court’s order.

Some local leaders do mention it during election rallies, but that is merely to lure voters.

By joining hands with PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP has itself drawn the curtain over doing away with Article 370.

As far as the Uniform Civil Code is concerned, the BJP is silent on the subject except batting for the removal of triple talaq, which is actually a part of the very idea of UCC. But experts see this as a ploy to get Muslim women's votes.

Not so corrupt

Modi government claims that not a single corruption case has been registered against it - unlike the previous Congress-led regime. That's true, until you dig deeper.

The way the BJP is different is that Modi government has (openly or through the backdoor) assumed control of all authorities and forced them to run as per their will. The government has even indulged in spats with Supreme Court on more than one occasion.

Several top posts are vacant, there is no sign of Lokpal and with loyalists heading agencies, it would be foolish to expect that bureaucrats report corruption in the government.

Meanwhile, chief ministers of most BJP-run states face corruption charges. Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh is embroiled in the padding scam, MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan faced the brickbats in the Vyapam scam, the Rajasthan government led by Vasundhra Raje has a list of scams under its belt, including the mining scam, the LED scam, and the PHED scam.

Yes, the difference is that the Congress has failed to make the scams an issue in the respective states and at the national-level, whereas the BJP has - in the past - left no opportunity to target the Congress for corruption, successfully making it a national issue.