Till how long can Modi-Shah lose friends and alienate allies?

Even as knives are out in the BJP against the fringe saffron group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo is faced with much bigger challenge than dealing with party motor mouths. While the party can silence the yogis and sadhvis, reshuffle the cabinet to sack or sideline the likes of Mahesh Sharma and VK Singh, the crisis that has hit the BJP dispensation will not go away so easily, and so soon.

For, in less than two years in the government, the BJP under Modi and Shah faces the crisis of confidence and credibility now. This crisis is not entirely internal though it's entirely of the making of the formidable duo.

The origin of the crisis lies in the strategy fashioned by Modi and Shah. And what is that strategy? It's a belief and misplaced confidence that under their leadership the BJP will shun the politics of alliances and go alone in the state assembly elections except where it has absolutely no options but to enter into electoral arrangement. Even if the party has to work out alliances under compulsion, the core strategy will remain a steadfast belief in going alone; consolidate the party in the areas of traditional influence and strength; and make dent in the new areas and states where either the party is virtually non-existent or has little influence.

At the core of the strategy is also a somewhat misplaced confidence that they, the Modi-Shah duo, can work to further weaken the Congress in its traditional strongholds and replace the Congress as the main challenger to power. The strategy foresees the emergence of the BJP as an alternative to the Congress where the BJP is still a third force after the Congress and any regional party. Weakening of the Congress is a step towards achieving the goal of "Congress-mukta Bharat"  (India without Congress) about which Modi and Shah have not been tired of talking in public.

The strategy was worked out during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Having witnessed the wave of support for Modi and clamour for change at the Centre, Modi and Shah concluded that they had to give up the former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee model of working out pre-poll alliances and coalitions. Modi's belief was based on his experiences in Gujarat where he worked hard, managed to marginalise the Congress that helped him buck the anti-incumbency trend.

Modi also might have taken a leaf out of his former leader LK Advani's strategy books. Advani, at the 1988 BJP plenary session in Agra, had launched the party in solo mode shunning mergers and alliances even as the party had merely two seats in the Lok Sabha at that time. The Babri Masjid-Ram Mandir movement was not yet in making but in hindsight Advani's strategy paid off as the BJP emerged as a major force after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

However, when the BJP was tasked with forming the government after emerging as the single largest party in the 1998 elections, Vajpayee-Advani duo found them shunned like plague by other non-Congress parties. After that 13-day untouchable status, Vajpayee brought in his moderate face in play to work out alliances and entered into collation by giving up the BJP's long-held core agendas such as the demand for abolition of the article 370 and implementation of uniform civil code.

Power drunk by gaining absolute majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Modi-Shah duo reversed the Vajpayee model. They refused to enter into alliances with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra in the state assembly elections as per their new plan. The result was hung assembly and finally the BJP and Shiv Sena entered into uneasy coalition to form the government. But neither Modi nor Shah has shown political sagacity to ease the tension with Shiv Sena which keeps the government on tenterhooks in Maharashtra.

In Bihar, where Nitish Kumar of JD(U) broke the alliance by putting the government on line, the BJP had Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party as partner but it was a minor force. Likewise, the splintered groups of Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustan Awam Morcha (Secular) and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RSLP) of Upendra Kushwaha couldn't be called alliances since they had no independent standing of their own as political parties. Modi's politics of exceptionalism keeps the major NDA alliance partners such as Akali Dal and TDP too largely alienated.  Will Modi rethink his strategy after the Bihar defeat? Will he improve relations with partners and cement alliances? Will he look for forging new alliances? Or will he insist on going alone? Much is at stake for Modi and for the BJP.