I would argue that the fight against Modi should be carried on a symbolic level. The main strength of Modi is the symbolic attachment of his figure to the state of Gujarat. The message he carries is simple: “Without me, Gujarat will become violent, the forces of communal violence will be unleashed, and the state will get away from the development track.” This symbolic attachment makes it very hard for a contender to challenge Modi. All the debates would be held on development and security, and the competitor would be caught in a vicious cycle of rhetoric such as: if you are against Modi it means that you are against development and security. An example of this is Shweta Bhatt who was contesting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the last election campaign. Shweta ran her campaign under the agenda of honesty and said that she is “fighting for freedom of speech and development in Gujarat.” Her campaign slogan was “If I win, it will be a victory for Gujarat; if I lose, Gujarat will lose.” As we see from her campaign, she got trapped in the same cycle of debates on development; however, she as a first-time runner could not convince the electorate that she knows more about development than the political heavyweight Modi, who already attached his face to the development in Gujarat, and proved that he could successfully facilitate the flow of foreign capital into Gujarat and provide security for Gujarat (no communal violence since 2002.) Moreover, her slogan is not convincing to the people of Gujarat, as they have seen improvement in security and development in the state. I will argue that these improvements are nothing more than a myth; however, a myth in a sense is something that people believe in. So it is not surprising that Shweta lost the battle to Modi before the actual elections. Despite my pessimism about her campaign, I believe that she made a right decision to fight a heavyweight politician on the political level under the overarching theme of honesty.

The fight with Mr. Modi should be carried on a political level; however, this fight should incorporate strategies of symbolic politics and should be carried on the level of symbolic politics. In my opinion the main aim of the contender is to detach the face of Modi from the state of Gujarat and especially from the symbols of development and security. Theory says that there are two ways to deal with political symbols. The first approach is to change the charge of symbol from positive to negative. For example the Modi’s model of development has a positive connotation right now, so by taking the approach of honesty, carried out by Shweta in her campaign, and by telling the truth about the dark side of the model like IDP camps, increasing ghettoization, benefits to foreign investors in stead of the locals, the charge of Modi’s model could be change to negative. Another approach is to deconstruct the relationship between signifier and its signified. An example of that could be a campaign with an aim to hijack the benefits of development from Modi, and return them to the Gujarati people. Again the agenda of truth introduced by Shweta could be used to say that Modi is not totally responsible for the rapid development of Gujarat. The real numbers show that the state was ahead of most Indian states before Modi, and not to forget that Per Capita Income in Gujarat 2010-11 ranked 8th in India. I believe that these approaches of competing on the level of symbolic politics where he obviously dominates could be highly beneficial. And the motto of the campaign should not be “If I win, it will be a victory for Gujarat; if I lose, Gujarat will lose,” but “Gujarat will sustain and prosper without Modi, we do not need Modi’s development for few; if I win, it will be a victory for all in Gujarat!”