By explicitly praising two beleaguered CMs - Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan - Narendra Modi has decided that backing his own party's leaders is crucial to his agenda of creating growth and jobs when the legislative route for reforms is blocked by Congress

When you break your silence, what you say should matter more than what you did not when you were quiet. Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence on Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan – whose resignations were demanded vociferously by the Congress by disrupting parliament - at a Bihar election rally. He gave both of them a ringing endorsement for their respective states' economic performance.

Modi said Raje and Chouhan had raised Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh from "Bimaru" status, and promised the same in Bihar if his party is elected to power. He did not go around giving Raje and Chouhan clean chits for anything they may or may not have done in their states on Lalitgate or Vyapam, but it is unlikely that he would have showered praise on these powerful Chief Ministers without an underlying political intent. It means he has made up his mind that the BJP has much to lose by not standing by its CMs. He is not planning to offer their heads to the Congress just because Rahul Gandhi or Sonia have demanded the.

This actually shows that Modi may be getting his politics right after months of being pushed to the wall by a belligerent and disruptive opposition that was holding the legislative agenda to ransom. The Congress-led aggression may continue, but it is having a positive effect on the BJP-led coalition by allowing it to close ranks. Both Modi and his party have realised that if they start sacrificing their CMs and central ministers under Congress pressure, they will be defeating themselves.

Modi's praise for the two CMs means that he is trying to get his development agenda back on course despite Congress obstructionism. To get his economics right, he has to first get his politics right, and it is his politics that has gone wrong in recent months. Or else a majority BJP government would never have allowed an inept politician like Rahul Gandhi to take up so much political space. By backing his two most powerful CMs, Modi in now back on track to regain the initiative.

The elections in Bihar are important, and the fact that the two Modi rallies in Bihar held so far saw packed audiences suggests that the BJP-led coalition is on a good wicket. It is significant that Modi praised Raje and Chouhan on the Bihar turf, when it was assumed that the allegations against them would cost the BJP votes in the assembly elections. This means Modi has drawn the right conclusion from his recent setbacks: that shrill allegations will not dent his party’s chances in Bihar, where Nitish Kumar is in alliance with a politician convicted for corruption. The pot can’t call the kettle black with any degree of conviction.

It is one of those well-held myths in Indian politics that corruption will always cost votes. Actually, this is true more of the day-to-day corruption people witness and not the big-ticket episodic corruption that grabs media attention. It was not 2G or CWG or Coalgate that cost the UPA the 2014 election, but the ineptness with which it ran the economy in its second tenure, when the winds were against it. It brought growth down to under 5 percent, and jobs were vanishing at a fast rate.

If episodic corruption were such a big deal, parties like SP, AIADMK, DMK, Akali Dal, YSR Congress and NCP would never have found traction in their regional bases. Despite the Saradha scam, Mamata Banerjee is winning more byelections than even she would have expected.

If the UPA had focused on running the economy well, there is little doubt that even if the Congress had lost, it would not have lost so badly. It could have at least achieved what Vajpayee did in 2004.

There are thus sound political and economic reasons for Modi to back Raje and Chouhan for now despite the political and media cacophony surrounding them.

First, if Congress is going to definitely derail Parliament, the legislative agenda will go for a toss anyway. This means governance and reforms will have to come through executive action and budgets. This can only happen if the centre is perceived as politically strong.

Second, a political rupture at the centre means the BJP has to use its own states to push reform legislation from below. Whether it is the land bill or labour reforms, if the centre cannot push them through till 2017, when the Rajya Sabha numbers may be better for the NDA, states have to drive the change. This is exactly what would not have been possible if Raje and Chouhan – the two most important CMs in the BJP – had been thrown to the wolves. Now, Modi can use them, and the Gujarat and Maharastra CMs, to drive change.

Third, getting his own party and CMs behind him means he can reach out to the non-belligerent opposition parties (J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Navin Patnaik in Odisha, and the CMs of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) from a position of strength. Some marginal help can also be expected from the CMs of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – especially on the goods and services tax bill. Without internal cohesion, the opposition CMs would have been wary of doing deals with a powerless Modi. It is no surprise that the Samajwadi Party is now breaking ranks with the Congress on the parliament logjam even as Modi gets assertive.



Fourth, Modi knows that winning 2019 will depend on how his party fares in the Hindi belt. Creating leadership confusion in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan thus makes no sense. Not only that, if Bihar gives the BJP decent results that can be interpreted as at least a partial victory, Uttar Pradesh is the next frontier. The BJP will, of course, go all out in both states, but regardless of whether it succeeds or not, it cannot afford to loosen its current hold in the Hindi belt.

Fifth, by standing firm, Modi is also acknowledging that being effective and appearing ethically upright are often contradictory goals in the highly compromised Indian system, where corruption and caste and regional loyalties can gang up to derail you. It does not mean Modi has to compromise with corruption, but he has to choose his fights carefully so that his core agenda does not go out of the window.

The reality is that the states are now economically powerful, and politically strong enough to derail any central initiative that goes beyond populism. To win this battle, Modi needs all the allies he can get in states ruled by his party, and covert help from the non-Congress-ruled states.

His best strategy is to isolate the Congress within the opposition space, and do deals with the rest to seize the political and economic initiative once more.