Failing gracefully

Neither Narendra Modi nor Amit Shah knows how to handle failure, it seems. There is audible rumbling within BJP about the majestic leaders’ refusal to share the blame for the devastating failure of the party in the recent elections. They have held “victory marches” whenever the party won an election in the past four years to take the credit. Why not share the blame now?

Failure is not fatal, but the refusal to accept it gracefully and learn the required lessons is. That is the most fundamental principle about failure. Perhaps the only useful thing about failure is the learning of the inevitable lessons. Those who sulk over it, those who rationalise the failure, or those pass the blame to others don’t learn the necessary lessons and stop far short of being great in any way.

BJP’s failure in the recent elections in five states has been too resounding to be ignored. The whole country has been looking forward to hear from the two great leaders about how they view the failure. What lessons did they learn? How are they going to change themselves?

Learning lessons naturally leads to making changes. The changes may be in policies, implementation, or at least attitudes. In the case of BJP, particularly Modi and Shah, quite a few changes are desirable in all those domains: policies, implementation and attitudes. They have been behaving like invincible autocrats. They imposed their will on the nation ruthlessly. The nation has gained little so far by their policies or attitudes. Why don’t they accept that in humility and tell the nation that they would look into the required changes? As long as they refuse to do that, nothing may change, that is, nothing may improve. Rather there is a possibility of the situation becoming worse because they may usher in worse policies out of vindictiveness or sheer malice born of their quintessential megalomania.

If they accept their limitations as well as the flaws of their policies, they may stand to gain much. Whether the nation will make any substantial gain is a different matter. For that, mere acceptance of flaws and limitations is not enough. An entire paradigm shift will be required.

The party should shift its focus from hatred of certain sections to tolerance of all sections. The catchy slogans they used for grabbing the nation’s fancy (scores of them like Sabka saath sabka vikas, Swachh Bharat, Beti padhao beti bachao, and so on) should be actually materialised. People see through the hollowness of mere words sooner than later.

The people who cast their votes in the recent elections have proved that democracy in India is still vibrant. That people know how to elect their leaders. It will be good if Modi and Shah and many others learn that lesson at least.