BJP’s Missed Call Politics Have Clearly Given it a Miss in Kolkata

Despite the noise made about BJP achieving a record number of members, the party still fell on its face in Kolkata.

The past couple of weeks saw a plethora of advertisements from the BJP. “Hail the largest political party in the world”, claimed one. “Mission ten crore accomplished”, boasted another. Essentially, putting two and two together we were to come to the conclusion that the BJP had become the largest political party ever seen in the world by accomplishing the unique feat of 10 crore members.

Now, 10 crore is a huge number and automatically evokes the question – how did all these people become members of the BJP?

One is reminded of the rather comical incident involving Kiran Bedi, when she became a member while sitting on the dais at Delhi’s BJP headquarters. Funnily enough, she was appointed the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate first, and then asked to become a member! All she had to do, she was loftily told, was to give a missed call to a certain number and lo and behold, membership was hers for the taking. None of the old-fashioned receipts, questionnaires and what-have-you’s for the BJP.

This then is how the BJP achieved its target membership of 10 crore. Largely through missed calls.

BJP Acting like a ‘Data Collecting Agency’?

But once we’ve gotten to the bottom of this mystery, another one begs questioning. When you begin to resemble a data collecting agency and not a political party, couldn’t things often go horribly wrong as well? Take a look at the Kolkata municipal polls drubbing! Till a month back, many within the BJP were hopeful of creating a serious dent in Mamata Banerjee’s fortress in Kolkata. Perhaps their enthusiasm was based on the membership drive that saw a lot of “missed call” responses from citizens of Bengal. This author has learnt that between the months of November 2014 and March 2015 alone, the BJP was boasting of a record enrollment of 45 lakh members in Bengal. Funny how the end result reflects none of the “missed call” glory; BJP was pasted clean by Didi’s Trinamool.

During the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP grabbed 24.3% of the vote share in Kolkata. However, in the 2015 Kolkata Municipal Elections, the BJP only got 15.37% compared to Trinamool’s 50.66%, with the former actually seeing a dip of around 9 percentage points despite the entire enrollment hoopla. According to The Telegraph, while the BJP was Number 2 in 38 wards, the Left was Number 2 in 65. Perhaps Trinamool’s Derek O’ Brien on Twitter summed it up most succinctly when he said: “Gas balloon goes phuuuush”.

BJP leaders are now joining angry voices to the CPM leadership which accuses Mamata of scientific rigging. Now Ms Banerjee didn’t implement the politics of missed calls, which merits the supposition that this might have worked in her favour. The BJP leaders were perhaps so over enthused by the number of missed calls, that they assumed that each new member was also going to be a worker.

Need of the Hour? “Paas Paas se Saath Saath”

At the recently concluded national executive meet of the party in Bangalore, PM Narendra Modi himself cautioned party workers against such assumptions. He said that while the BJP has now become the world’s largest party in terms of members, it must also work at becoming the largest in terms of active workers. “Paas paas se saath saath” was the slogan he attempted to reinforce – in a reminder to his party that those who had come “paas paas” aka “near” the party should now also be made to work along with the party. The focus, he insisted, needed to be on converting them into “active workers “.

Perhaps the BJP hasn’t implemented that advice so far. Else its vote share wouldn’t have plummeted to 6% in a state where it had shot up to 17%.

The idea of membership through missed calls serves for a good headline. But politics on the basis of missed calls may lead to the party missing the goal post altogether.