The reason why India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) succeeded earlier in riding out two major upheavals  – demonetisation and the migration of labourers after last year’s lockdown – is that, first, both the events had an economic bearing and, secondly, the resultant loss of lives was not high enough to destabilise a government.

As is known, it takes time for the economic effects of an official step to be felt. However, the loss of lives is another matter. In the case of demonetisation, for instance, about 100 people are said to have died, mostly as they stood in queues in front of banks to return their currency notes which had suddenly become useless in one stroke announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

And, as for the migration of labourers from cities to their villages, the labour ministry told parliament that it did not have any data about loss of jobs or of lives of the ten million workers who returned home, mostly on foot as they walked for hundreds of kilometres along the highways.

It is the probability of less than a thousand people dying because of the two events which appeared quite cataclysmic at the time that apparently enabled the BJP to avoid any serious erosion of its political influence, although it did lose several state elections. Moreover, the party found a sufficient number of takers for its glib explanations for the two steps.

For instance, demonetisation was supposed to hit the hoarders of 'black' or undeclared money and defang terrorists, while the lockdowns were unavoidable to save the country from Covid-19 even if their peremptory imposition inflicted untold misery on the hapless migrant labourers caught between the devil – their uncaring landlords and employers – and the deep blue sea of the sudden shutdown.

BJP’s primary support base hit

Unlike the previous disruptions, however, the present crisis has the potential to blow up in the government’s face for two reasons. One is that it is a medical emergency, which means that the death toll can be much higher than what it was in the earlier cases. And the other reason is that the section which is being hit the most is the BJP’s primary support base of the urban middle class.

As the hospitals run out of beds, medicines, oxygen and vaccines, the middle class – as well as those lower down the social and economic scale – are suddenly confronted by a situation which they could not have imagined when they believed that credit cards and old school ties could take care of all problems.

It is not only that the denizens of the high-rise apartments who had gathered in their balconies to clang utensils and light lamps to scare away the virus in an exercise of voodoo politics have discovered that they have been left high and dry by a seemingly clueless government; they now probably also suspect that they have been victims of deceit right from the time when “achhey din” (good days) was promised in 2014 by PM Modi but never really materialised.

Government’s wrong priorities

It is now clear that if the government had not been so preoccupied with building a new parliament or buying fancy aircraft for the VIPs, not to mention letting its poster-boys in the BJP-run provinces enact laws to further polarise society, the country would not have found itself in such a dire situation.

There is little doubt that the whole of last year when the virus first appeared was spent in theatrical exercises based on a personality cult instead of strengthening the medical infrastructure so that the country would not be caught unawares when a second wave struck.

Experts not consulted

If the experts had been consulted, they would have undoubtedly warned against being deluded by the drop in the number of cases last autumn and be prepared for the worst instead of exporting vaccines to boost the country’s prestige.

But, as is known, the government places little trust in specialists – it prefers “hard work” to Harvard, as  Modi once sarcastically said - which is why qualified professionals were ignored before demonetisation and also before the lockdown in March last year with four hours’ notice.

Instead, it is extravagant praise for the prime minister for being "God’s gift to the nation", as Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu said, or a “versatile genius”, as a former Supreme Court judge Arun Mishra said, or a “visionary”, as another apex court judge M.R. Shah said, which evidently fostered an atmosphere of hubris which was thought to be enough to cow down the virus.

Hence, the carefree decision to let millions gather for the Hindu religious festival Kumbh Mela and organise huge election rallies. The price of  these “super-spreader” events can be seen in the funeral pyres burning in rows and the paucity of burial ground in graveyards.

BJP’s Achilles heel 

As long as the political objective was to promote Hindu supremacy in accordance with the saffron brotherhood’s agenda with the help of opportunistic non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties like the Biju Janata Dal or the YSR Congress or the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the BJP was merrily stringing its supporters along the route of electoral success at the national level as in 2014 and 2019.

But the “Chinese virus” may have set up a roadblock by exposing the BJP’s lack of governing skills which cannot be hidden by “persuading” Twitter to remove the posts critical of the government, for the ruling party has been found to be flat-footed and incompetent.

It had no foresight and was bereft of capable people who could provide a sense of direction. Instead, it prefers to lash out gracelessly at critics as Health Minister Harsh Vardhan did when former prime minister Manmohan Singh suggested a way out of the mess.

A combination of favourable factors – a weak opposition, a spineless bureaucracy and a cynical recourse to communalism – has given the BJP a larger-than-life image. But the medical fiasco caused by the pandemic has exposed its Achilles heel to show the world that it is nothing other than a gaggle of blundering time-servers.

(The writer is a commentator on current affairs. Views are personal)