A Little More Civility Was Expected, Mr Modi

Long before noon on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, "Spoke to @Arvindkejriwal & congratulated him on the win. Assured him of the Centre's complete support in the development of Delhi." 

Within the next four hours 13,000 of his 10 million followers had retweeted it. It was a civil and statesmanlike gesture from the Prime Minister, his first towards the Aam Aadmi Party and Arvind Kejriwal in almost two weeks. 

Unfortunately, civility was not much in evidence during the last one week of the campaigning in the national capital when the Prime Minister chose to address four, large public meetings preceded by a blitzkrieg of radio jingles and carpet bombing of hoardings and newspaper advertisements calling upon the people of the capital to extend their support to him. 'Chalo, Chalein Modi ke saath' was the message they sought to convey.

While the landslide victory catches even AAP by surprise, the euphoria of victory is unlikely to wash away the resentment and bitterness AAP supporters would have felt at BJP's no-holds-barred campaign. Mr Modi's government conveniently overlooked extending an invitation to Kejriwal on the Republic Day. And when AAP pointed out that as a former chief minister of Delhi he was entitled to the courtesy, both BJP national president Amit Shah as well as BJP's chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi mocked him.

Bedi famously said that Kejriwal should join the BJP if he wanted an invitation to the parade, while Shah told an interviewer on TV that he would ensure that Kejriwal was invited to the swearing-in-ceremony of Bedi as chief minister. The Prime Minister can scarcely claim that he was unaware of the controversy. He would have risen in people's esteem if he had intervened, tendered an apology to Kejriwal and ensured that an invitation was extended to him. But he did nothing of the kind.

Meanwhile, not all the BJP poll related advertisements were innocuous as many of them ridiculed the 'Mufflerman' and mocked his susceptibility to cold and cough. One of the newspaper advertisements showed the Mufflerman putting his hands on the heads of his children and taking a vow that he would never get into politics. Another sought to take a potshot at the disruptive man from an 'Upadravi Gotra'. The series of advertisements were stopped after Kejriwal turned them to his advantage, pointing out how the BJP was targeting him, his family and his caste.

But while the common man wondered at the seemingly limitless resources unleashed by the BJP in the election, the Prime Minister's own rhetoric as he addressed people was indiscreet, if not vicious. In his by now familiar, mocking style, the Prime Minister ridiculed AAP's "world record" for losing deposits in the Lok Sabha elections. The result of the Delhi election would hopefully exercise some restraining influence on him in future. While one can argue that all is fair in politics, love and war and justify poll rhetoric as par for the course, on many occasions the PM's speech left a bad taste in the mouth.

AAP, said the PM, ran a factory manufacturing lies in the capital! Kejriwal, he added, liked to describe himself as an anarchist and liked to take on the establishment like Naxalites. If so, his place was in the jungle, said Modi, while cautioning people to beware of innocent faces that could stab them in the back as they had in the past. He also raised the pitch on donations from non-existent companies and both Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley publicly accused AAP of helping in the laundering of black money.

The Prime Minister, who clearly spearheaded BJP's poll campaign, had not an iota of doubt about the election in Delhi. "This election is not only about who your MLA or who your chief minister will be," he declared and announced," Delhi will decide how the world sees India". He held out the veiled threat that things could work only if people elected a BJP Government in the state. This was followed up with the plea that he was said to be 'lucky' and hence there was no point in voting for others who would bring bad luck to Delhi. The next moment the Prime Minister was pleading that voting for a BJP Government made sense because then the state government would work better because it would be afraid of him.

So what does one make of the Prime Minister's listless and rambling campaign in Delhi? What they unfortunately indicate is that he and his government would bide their time to get even; that graceless at the best of times they would be happy to avenge their humiliation by whatever means it takes. One would have been happier with a more responsible and more positive campaign from a ruling party which is the first party in 30 years to enjoy a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha.