Soon after the Gujarat riots of 2002 that led to the soaring popularity of Narendra Modi in his home state, a story began doing the rounds. The story may have been apocryphal but it said that Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) supremo Pravin Togadia had confronted Modi and had asked him in colloquial Gujarati: “Why your plate is full, and mine is empty?” In other words why have you garnered all the popularity and my ratings have remained where they were? Implicit in these assertions: the foot soldiers of the Gujarat riots came from the VHP.

As Modi went places after 2002, Togadia was marginalised and became a near outsider in the establishment in Gujarat. This rankled Togadia not the least because he is a worthy from the caste of Patels that forms the main support base of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat. Togadia was not the only man who rankled. Keshubhai Patel the chief minister whom Modi replaced in 2001 was equally upset. How can a party that is in power because of Patel power have a non-Patel chief minister was his argument. (For those who came in late, the Patel — who are very clannish — originally supported the Congress party and ruled the roost for many years. But then Congress chief minister Madhav Sinh Solanki, wanted his own caste card and conjured the KHAM (Kshatriya Harijan Adivasi Muslim) vote bank and started a policy of reservations in the early 1980s much before the Mandal commission recommendations were brought in by VP Singh at the Centre. Solanki’s Congress won 149 seats out of 182 assembly seats, a record that Modi has been unable to better. But Solanki was soon out, the state being gripped by anti-reservation riots led by Patels who joined the BJP en masse and brought the hitherto unknown party to the forefront in Gujarat with Keshubhai being the tallest leader)

Now Keshubhai is too old and retired from active politics, but Togadia, an oncologist is not quite sixty. With the VHP cadres having penetrated every village in Gujarat and having hold over the less prosperous Patels in the villages, Togadia has struck back, or so is the belief in Gujarat.

Although the anti-reservation riots began two years ago with small rallies everywhere, it is probably not purely coincidental that they have flared up in the run up to the Bihar election. Elections in Bihar are all about castes and in the post-Mandal scenario (1990s onwards) OBCs have ridden to power both in UP and Bihar. Now imagine the message reaching OBC voters in Bihar: in Gujarat the ruling BJP’s main supporters do not want reservations or want to dilute reservations by declaring higher castes such as Patels as OBCs. The OBCs of Bihar will immediately shun the BJP. This will be at a time when Yadavs in Bihar are showing an increasing tendency to gravitate towards BJP. It may be noted that although among informed sections the blame for the agitations is put on the head of Togadia, the common folk believe that the ‘invincible’ Modi is behind all this. Who else but Modi can manage a mobilization of a 5 lakh crowd in Ahmedabad (as was seen in the Hardik Patel rally last week), is their thinking. The argument, specious though it may be, runs like this: “Modi does not believe in caste reservations. All he wants is economic criteria for reservations. Gujarat is Hindutva’s laboratory, so Modi is experimenting with the prospects of removing caste reservations in Gujarat. Later he will extend it to the rest of India.”

Now Modi is no political novice to try to destabilise the state over which ruled roost for nearly a decade and a half. This argument is only to damage his image across the OBC world across the country.

To put all the blame entirely on Togadia however for Modi’s present discomfiture will not be correct. There are many other factors that have combined for the present agitations in Gujarat. The biggest factor is Modi’s search for the middle ground. The 2002 riots over, Modi realised that his popularity may have had soared in Gujarat but plummeted across the country and the world. Modi realised that he needed a constituency outside Gujarat. Thus began Vibrant Gujarat — a biannual mega show to attract investments from across the country and the world. It was soon reduced to a programme to woo big business who would then promote Modi for their own benefit. Soon big business was singing paeans to Modi even as he kept doling goodies to them. It may be worth recollecting that the demand for making Modi the Prime Minister was first made by businessmen at a Vibrant Gujarat show in 2009.

As a natural corollary to wooing Big business, Modi tried to make efforts to rope in the middle classes who benefited from the process of liberalisation by getting jobs and positions in the new created factories which came up because of the new investments. Prashant Kishor, a doctor from Bihar but who had worked in WHO came forward to implement the Modi plan to rope in the middle classes. He formed the Centre for Accountable Governance (CAG) to bring probity in public life and launched programmes like chai pe charcha and other innovative moves that went a long way in increasing Modi’s popularity among the rising middle class who saw him the messiah who would deliver a better life.

With big business and the middle class in his pocket and some smart political maneuvering Modi rode to electoral success to land up in 7 RCR. But in the process he ignored the original supporters of the party who had expected manna to rain from heaven. They are seething in anger and frustration and Hardik Patel is the manifestation of this phenomenon of jobless growth and forcible land acquisition solely for big business. In the pre-Modi days, the economic engine that pulled the Gujarat economy was the small and middle enterprises. This spread the economic pie thinly but democratically. Post liberalisation the small and middle business that created jobs have gone phut and big businesses with few jobs have taken over. At the same time more and more land is being acquired by the government for the benefit of foreign investors in the infrastructure sector.

In the meanwhile Prashant Kishor who used to operate from Modi’s residence has deserted his master (or been kicked out). He is now with, yes, Nitish Kumar. Prashant Kishor has taken along with him a deep insight into the Modi mind and possibly the detailed data base created on the eve of the last election.

What has been left behind are internal saboteurs. Proof of this comes through instances of deliberate targeting of Patels by the police in a state that is led by a Patel chief minister Anandiben Patel who also is a close associate of Modi . The ranks of police are filled with non Patels who hate the Patels because they think that the Patels are ‘haves’ who benefited by the twenty year long BJP raj. This is the irony: everybody in Modi’s garvi Gujarat thinks that they are have-nots including the Patels whom others aver are haves!

Modi is now in a fix and the latest move to allow the land bill to lapse is a Hardik Patel effect. Being a practical man Modi will make many more compromises in the coming days and weeks. Modi must have realised that big business and the upcoming middle class has also started viewing him with suspicion because of his lack of delivery of much hyped promises. Even as he begins to work harder to do this, the smart operator that Modi is he will soon embark on cultivating another more durable constituency. What that will be another story,but right now Togadia through Hardik has the upper hand as he promises to spread anarchy across the nation through like minded groups. Meanwhile Gujarat continues to be pulverised with SMS , WhatsApp and other internet applications forcibly turned off by the government for fear that it will fuel rumours and more troubles.

What a sorry state of affairs.