Narendra Modi's confidence - when he took a jibe at Manmohan Singh's speech and said that 'good days' will arrive in a few months with the next round of Lok Sabha polls - was probably not misplaced. While the Prime Minister has officially announced that he will retire from an active political life after the Lok Sabha elections, the audience Modi was speaking to yesterday - NRIs and PIOs (persons of Indian origin) - was mostly with the Gujarat CM on his ideas of governance.
From the looks of it, the Congress, is most likely to face a wash-out in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. However, Modi's confidence about his party's performance in 2014, like he made it evident yesterday, has one small hiccup. In the form of the Aam Aadmi Party and its growing youth relations.
The AAP might have a long way to go before it catches up with the BJP in terms of recognition and reach, but the fact that there is a positive buzz about the party in young, middle class India cannot be ignored too. In fact, it might just be able to make a sizable dent the BJP's vote bank by grabbing votes from the middle class and first time voters. This is one section of voters that the BJP too is strongly relying on to cross the 200 seat mark in the coming polls.
Will Narendra Modi be a more efefctive youth icon than AAP's Arvind Kejriwal? Agencies.
In his last meeting with the party's poll campaign committee, Modi had reportedly pointed out that the addition of 120 million new voters could spell magic for the party. The Gujarat CM, likewise, has been trying his best to connect with this new breed of voters in the country by exhorting them develop strong nationalistic sentiments.
In fact, in almost all his addresses, he keeps mentioning how the country's youth will reap rich dividends for India if given a chance. However, with the Aam Aadmi Party, almost effortlessly, speaking to the same sections of the country, Modi probably needs to rethink his strategy right away.
The issue of AAP's rise in the political horizon was addressed in a RSS meet in Hyderabad on Thursday, which was attended by the likes of Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari. The BJP leaders also discussed the possible implications of the Congress taking a deliberate, timid step back and letting AAP run the show. It was decided that things shouldn't be taken for granted even if Arvind Kejriwal's party has only proved to have made a quantifiable impression in just Delhi still.
While the top leadership of the BJP might be taking it easy, the rung three and rung four leaders in the party seem to have a different approach to the AAP problem. Though the party has kicked off the 'one note and one vote' campaign aimed at reaching 10 crore households, the BJP workers feel that some amount of complacence has crept into the party's actions.
Lot of them are also clueless about the party's future plan of action, because with the rise of Modi, the party decisions are mostly taken in Gandhinagar. In fact, even Rajnath Singh has been working in tandem with Modi from there. Apart from the BJP leaders we are familiar with, Modi has a close band of advisors who are hidden from the public eye and don't belong to the core organisational group of BJP.
However, senior BJP leaders are of the opinion that BJP has already rustled up such a huge voter base even in the rural areas that it will be very difficult for any party to dent its prospect of winning. Some of them are of the opinion that the AAP will not even be able to cut into its votes effectively. And in Modi's case, he has even completed campaigning in most states for the first round.
The party is eagerly looking forward to Modi's campaign in Goa now where the Gujarat CM has an opportunity to reach out to young voters. His confidante Amit Shah is heading the campaign team on young first time voters. Additionally Modi is counting on a Citizen for Accountable Governance (CAG), a group of professionals who are closely associated with him. They have helped organise two functions - one in which they roped in delegates from colleges across the country and has also help build a research based promotional background for the Sardar Patel statue.
This group's official website says, "We are a group of around 100 like – minded young professionals who are passionate about furthering the cause of accountable governance in India. Our members come from diverse backgrounds like consulting, media, law, investment banking and public policy, after having completed their education from the finest institutions like IITs, IIMs, ISB, Stanford, Cornell, etc. What initially began as a coffee-table discussion, gradually became an online outreach to people of similar interests in our immediate networks and has now finally taken the shape of this continuously growing group called CAG. In the immediate future, we aim to involve more than 1,00,000 on-ground associates to help us achieve our goal of making India a model of accountable governance by encouraging and facilitating greater engagement between the citizens and the political and administrative establishment."
Now in view of new challenges CAG is planning to engage the youth in tier two and tier three cities. The initiatives, however, will be supervised by Modi. One has to wait and watch that results they yield.
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