What Gadkari's critics ignore is that he, on Nagpur's bidding, is bent on experimenting with a new organizational style. His brief is to get rid of the Advani era command structure and demolish the super-boss style. After Advani's forced vanvas following the Jinnah remarks, Rajnath Singh had simply appropriated the old style. RSS now wants the party chief to function as a repository of broad consensus among the senior leaders. This entails endless consultations and some delay. Clearly, Gadkari's own handicap as a outsider-caretaker makes his task more arduous.

There is clear difference between Advani's Congress-style model and the RSS idea of perfect internal consultations. Advani's decisions were influenced by his wiz kids consisting mostly of media men and lobbyists in the garb of experts. Within the party, younger colleagues, all of them he had groomed, functioned as a close-knit coterie. Others, including those like Murli Manohar Joshi, Rajnath Singh and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat were left to merely endorse the decisions at the party forums. The backroom boys even drafted resolutions and gave inputs for the party chief's keynote addresses.

Positively for the BJP, the system provided the much needed corporate patronage and the resultant media back-up. Therefore, Gadkari's arrival and Nagpur's reassertion that he is there to stay on, have not taken kindly by the old group. This has also certainly weakened the hold of powerful outside interests, who had held sway over the NDA government's decisions. Those who deride Gadkari as weak and indecisive apparently still dream of the return of the glorious durbar. They are now at one last bid to block the shift. Remember, just this month, Advani himself had at a party meeting extolled the virtues of the old 'single-command' model.

The advent of the super-boss concept in BJP can be traced to mid-90s when the party found itself isolated after the failure of the Ayodhya movement. Advani's political spin doctors took advantage of the spreading disillusionment and put forth a three-pronged plan to give an entirely new makeover for the party. This was done in the face of strong opposition by the traditional leaders to the 'Congressisation' of the BJP. The first of the three components was to introduce a 'presidential' form of party management as an answer to the Congress party's much envied cadre discipline and mute compliance.

The second was the 'Vajpayee project' as a 'we-too-can' response to the Indira kind of populist image and to present an undisputed PM before the voters. While Vajpayee's 'liberal' image was highlighted to attract newer sections, Advani controlled the party. In the process, an array of veterans like Kushabau Thackre, Bhandari, Joshi and Malkani were either shunted as governors or simply sidelined. A set of critical policy shifts constituted the third component. All this did encounter stiff resistance from the traditionalists like Malkani, Joshi and Govindacharya.

The first sign of the takeover by the durbar was the physical disappearance of the Gandhinagar economic policy declaration which advocated a balanced view of globalization and a fiercely nationalistic (Swadeshi) economic policy, from the party book stalls. The wiz kids and lobbyists began pushing the party to more right-of-centre than Narasimha Rao. Slowly but steadily, the BJP was converted from a party of traders and small business to a totally corporate and global-friendly entity. Advani and Jaswant Singh became regulars in chamber functions. And the party's share of corporate donation jumped almost to the level of the rival Congress.

Here is a striking parallel between what had happened to India's two main political parties. BJP's dumping of the official Swadeshi economic policy was re-enacted with precision when the UPA formed government eight years later. After May, 2004, the Congress establishment had watched with bewilderment the jettisoning of its own manifesto and UPA's CMP in preference to its own PM's parallel agenda. The same forces had worked behind in both cases. In both cases, policies dropped down from outside became official agenda without any kind of formal approval by the two parties.

In Congress, the fait accompli happened both in 1991 under Rao and from mid-2004 under the present PM. Rao, however, had the generosity to get part of the change approved at the Thirupathi session the next year. All the same, the BJP continued to mouth both lines. In the case of UPA, the only resistance to copycat application of standard economic prescriptions came by way of occasional caveats from the Sonia establishment and stiff resistance put up by the NGOs and Left.

Though the RSS has already dismantled the 'single-command' durbar system and blocked the replication of another personality-centred 'Vajpayee project,' it has so far left the question of Swadeshi rather vague. One of its old champions reassures that once the organizational problems are sorted out, there will be a move to revive and recast the Gandhinagar programme to suit the new situation. According to him, had the Advani durbar been in command, the BJP might have merrily endorsed the nuclear deal after making right noises.

For RSS, economic policy has not been a strong point. It was critical of the Nehruvian concept. But it has been an active advocate of the post-1991 Gandhinagar document. Like the Sonia establishment with UPA, RSS and like-minded BJP leaders like Joshi had tried to restrain the NDA's reform group. RSS boss himself had forced Vajpayee to drop Jaswant Singh as finance minister because he did 'not mind another cola' in India. But like Sonia establishment, RSS too had reluctantly yielded to the globalization lobby within the party.

Now the post-Durbar BJP takes a critical view of most of UPA's economic initiatives. But it is difficult to say whether this indicates a genuine policy shift towards the old Swadeshi line or as part of the usual opposition responses to ruling party. Yet Gadkari himself had blamed futures trading for the rise in food prices though his own government had initiated it. This month, party spokesperson opposed FDI in retail, another policy tilt. Three days before this, Rajnath Singh at Lucknow alleged the UPA government was 'dancing to the tunes of Americans'. Significantly, all such remarks have come from the known RSS enthusiasts, not the remnants of the old durbar. We will have to wait to make out what all this really means. (IPA Service)