Excerpt

Their plushy life-style—an antithesis of simple and almost ascetic life-style of the senior leaders—does not augur well for a party which boasts of its RSS lineage. They have calculatedly pushed the Party to operate in a style that demands huge funds with the result that the Party has come to depend helplessly on their skill of raising finances. It is saddening to see that a bottle of Bisleri has replaced a glass of water in the party conclaves. The Party seems to be convinced that cordless phones is a substitute for cordiality and fax machines for fraternity. Forgetting that not long ago the BJP had blasted Rajiv Gandhi for his 'Sariska' extravaganza, his holidaying in Andaman Island and his picnicking in Lakshadweep, its leaders have quietly followed him even though the Party is nowhere near power. The new leaders have projected a distorted image of the Party as exhibited by Kirit Somayya, Bombay BJP President, who zealously persuaded Advani to grace a disco-dandiya theatricality than to share the concerns of the dispossessed by visiting a local slum.

These leaders have lowered BJP's esteem as a Party with their jazzy life-style. They behave as if they are above party norms, are answerable to nobody and are entitled to treat contemptuously the members of the RSS family, conveniently forgetting that the latter had sweated hard and some had even shed their blood over the last seven decades to lay the foundation of the BJP. The new order of leadership is concerned more with its image in the media and in the mirror than that reflected in the quality of the mass response. To them flashy correspondents of glossy magazines are demi-gods and media management a modern ritual for climbing up. Their narcissistic disposition has tarred the party image and triggered off a crisis of credibility in the Party. The hallmark of the new leadership is not sincere and selfless service but savvy sophisticated smartness.