AAP fracas likely to bolster Brand Modi

The Aam Admi Party's (AAP's) suicidal tendencies are bound to help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) more than any other party because the saffron outfit is politically better placed to exploit them.If the AAP hadn't been driven by competitive egos, it might have been able to build on its success in the Delhi elections to spread its wings to, say, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Haryana for a start.

Such inroads by a feisty competitor could not but have unnerved the BJP, under pressure as it is from challenges from traditional rivals like the Congress and the regional parties of the Hindu heartland on the land acquisition law and other issues. Now, however, the BJP can breathe easy.

Since the AAP has ceased to be a major danger, at least for the present, the Narendra Modi government can pursue its agenda at its own pace.Indeed, the Prime Minister may well feel that providence is on his side. First, the Congress virtually collapsed to hand him a majority in the Lok Sabha last year. Now, the only party which gave signs of being a formidable rival is imploding.

The BJP's other advantage is that most of the other parties are suffering from leadership problems.While the Congress will have to contend with the exigencies of dual control at the top posed by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, it is yet to be seen whether the revamped Janata-2 comprising several parties of the "cow belt" plus Janata-Secular of Karnataka will be able to take-off.

It is possible that Janata-2 will present a serious challenge to the BJP in the Bihar elections towards the end of the year with its caste-dominated vote banks. But whether regional heavyweights with inflated egos will be able to stick together for any length of time is open to question.It is obvious that compared to these parties, the BJP has in Modi a leader whose political longevity is seemingly assured.

Modi appears to be reasonably secure at the moment with no one in sight who offers a genuine challenge. His only problem at present is the slowness of the reforms process which is negating the pre-election promise of achhey din (good days) via a fast-paced development programme.The other is the less serious one of the RSS-types imposing their fetishes on the nation by, among other things, banning beef and films like Un-freedom, which depicts "unnatural passion" or homosexuality, and "Fifty Shades of Grey" for depicting excessive passion.

Rajnath Singh has been toying with the idea of a countrywide ban on beef even if the beef-eating "festivals" organised in Kerala and West Bengal have shown that not all Indians, including Hindus, share the inhibitions of the RSS.These issues may be of interest mainly to the chatterati, but social network-savvy BJP cannot be unaware that no segment of society can be ignored in these days of the Twitter and YouTube, not to mention the 24/7 news channels with their insatiable thirst for sensationalism.Not surprisingly, the RSS wants the government to circumvent the judiciary's deletion of Section 66-A of the IT Act, freeing the Internet from official control.

By Amulya Ganguli