As a demonstration of what demagoguery can achieve Modi’s victory in Gujarat can hardly be bettered. This is no disparagement of either demagoguery or the demagogue, or the tactics the latter unapologetically uses.

It is simply a recognition that the damagogue has a place in an electoral system that has failed to overcome its limitations.

All electoral systems concede that, at some stage of their development, if any, the damagogue emerges with a role to play.

The Westminster pattern of government, vaguely inherited from the British and touched up with Nehruvian “idealism” ensured that the day of the quintessential demagogue was postponed. But now Gujarat has signalled that the postponement is over.

It had to happen and it has happened. Too much has been made of Sonia Gandhi’s melodramatic “merchants of death” rhetoric. Evolution rather than anything Sonia and the opposition have said is responsible for this new and disturbing stage in Indian politics.

Self-assured demagogue
A demagogue by definition is “a leader or orator who appeals to popular desires or prejudices to further personal interests, or rabble-rouser!” He can also be a leader or orator who “espouses the cause of the common people”.
He is usually a mix of both which is why post-election Modi is at the moment difficult to categorise.  What can’t be doubted is that a demagogue is self-assured, is deeply committed to what he believes, is above average efficient because he wants things to be done and is that rare public creature whose integrity is beyond question and who has a withering contempt for populism. All of which is to say that he breaks the mould.

His methods shock and angers. He has no time or inclination to pretend that vote-getting is to further the democratic cause or to serve what the run-of-the-mill politician tells us is the national interest.

For us then in 2007 he is a new phenomenon, defiantly outside the easy framework in which politics has been confined.

Invoking the twin themes
Can anyone deny that this is a framework against which there is a mounting exasperation? That the average politician is progressively touching a new low in the estimation of the people? That he employs shenanigans of every conceivable kind to get votes and never mind anything else?

To an electorate resigned to and disgusted by all this, Modi as demagogue emerges as a redeemer, in refreshing contrast to the dithering self-serving politician with whom we have been saddled for so long.

He reinforces this by using the twin themes of development and Hindutva, invoking either or both as occasion demands. He switched from the first to the second when Sonia intervened with her untimely comment.

A characteristic of the demagogue is that he is willing to pay the price of being one. BJP stalwarts, including his apparent sponsor L K Advani, BJP dissidents, the Sangh Parivar and the party President have good reason for unease and reservations.

Again, by definition, a demagogue is a loner and Rajnath Singh pointedly underlined this by declaring that no individual is larger than the party only to find that both Modi and Gujarat voters have denied this.

Modi’s seeming answer is that an intensified development drive will add some needed shine to Hindutva — that this will galvanise voters beyond Gujarat and that in the process he can reinvent the BJP and that he can marginalise or negate the older generation of politicians across all party lines.

To rub this, he has mockingly thanked the BJP and Sangh Parivar for their support. Yet visions of Modi at the Centre are far-fetched and unrealistic.

His iniative is a one-man show, not a movement. He has intentionally or not, exposed deep-seated flaws in the prevailing electoral process. But what can be called his “surge” must, like all surges, stop short of a revolutionary change. Like Advani’s yatras it rises but is unsustainable. Emotional climaxes are inherently short-lived.
Development is long-term but without it, as experience has shown. Hindutva is not always electorally productive. And he has over-identified himself with Gujarat. So, looked at critically, the mandate Modi has is self-given and not, as perhaps Gujarat voters themselves think, from the people.

Edgy politics in current situation
Yet the fallout has not been entirely negative. The foundations of the current electoral process have been shaken. The conventions and assumptions that underlie them invite questions never thought of before.
The possibilities inherent in a BJP relatively free from the incubus of the Sangh Parivar, and in a Congress chastened by some serious introspection and free of its own Karat-managed Left incubus are indicative of a potential for something positive in the future.

Some awareness of this explains why Rahul Gandhi’s seemingly casual meeting with Advani and the latter’s hurried nomination as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate are seen as significant, though of what no one has been bold enough to predict.

Modi has also given the Left something acute to think about. Sonia has complained that Congress needs and hasn’t got “political space”.

The only way to get this space is to go ahead with 123 and challenge the Left to withdraw support.
If it withdraws a Congress out of office will retain the “space” that defines it.

If it doesn’t the Congress wins, ironically thanks to Modi, J M Lyngdoh, the former chief election commissioner, says that the whole thing is a street brawl. But a brawl can sometimes do some good.