It is for history to judge the importance of the two-day national executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Mumbai earlier this week, but the immediate impact of the event has been that the party has, apart from the regular clichés, nothing much to offer in terms of a viable political alternative to the Congress-led UPA government.

That is as far as the party goes. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, on the other hand, has used this platform to more or less establish himself as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Even if Modi is not accepted by NDA member Janata Dal (United), the BJP seems to have no alternative to Modi as a prime ministerial candidate for 2014.