Congress’s summer of 42

Sonia Gandhi has often exhorted the party in her Rae Bareli rallies with the words, “Uttar Pradesh mein mahaul badlega (prospects will change in UP)”. But the Congress first needs to organise its own people and consolidate a network which should not only be working but seen to be working. The Congress in Uttar Pradesh is an entity that revives to a semblance of activity only during elections. All all other times the party remains conspicuous by its absolute absence.

There are no active party offices, few public programmes and fewer campaigns. There is no dearth of issues in Uttar Pradesh at the moment which can sustain campaigns. Law and order, power, corruption, the rule of the lumpen, starvation, wheat crisis, Muslim anxiety, encephalitis, you name it.

Uttar Pradesh is up for grabs to both the national political parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, if they can somehow find it within themselves to harness a strong wave against the Mulayam Singh Yadav government. But the Congress is in a clear disadvantage on account of the near-absence of a network and an acute paucity of state-level leaders. The BJP still seems to be paralysed by an exodus towards the BSP. Its prospects are made worse by a divided and visionless leadership and inability to craft a programme. The party has not been able to cash in even on the Hindutva plank, despite the Varanasi blasts, the Mau communal violence, the killing of its Ghazipur MLA, Krishnanand Rai.

Besides the immediate issues, the ideological degeneration in the Samajwadi Party has already spawned the Muslim formation, the People’s Democratic Front, led by clergy claiming the ability to influence 147 seats, as well as the Jan Morcha Alliance led by former prime minister V.P. Singh. These two groups are working in tandem, and together they represent the formidable combination of Muslims, dalits and OBCs.

These groups have the capacity to affect the prospects of the main players, the Samajwadi Party, the BSP, the BJP and the Congress. Small wonder that Congressmen fear that they could be the biggest losers. The Morcha and the PDF together would have considerable bargaining power in supporting whoever comes closest to forming the next government in Uttar Pradesh. That would, on current trends, be either Mayawati or Mulayam.

The trouble is, the traditional vote base of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh — the Muslims, brahmins and dalits — has long been eroded and the party is doing absolutely nothing to woo it back. Muslims can neither forget nor forgive the Congress for the demolition of the Babri masjid, despite all their misgivings about the Samajwadi Party. The party never mustered the courage to initiate a concerted dialogue with the community. This is why the PDF becomes a natural partner of V.P. Singh’s Morcha and not of the Congress.

The SP and the BSP too must be concerned about losing dalits and OBCs votes to V.P. Singh. The one-lakh-strong VP rally in Lucknow recently in the presence of Ram Vilas Paswan and Laloo Prasad Yadav sought to revive the relevance of the original Mandal Messiah. If the Congress has made any effort to woo these votebanks, it has been in giving ministerial berths at the Centre to Prakash Jaiswal, an OBC, Bhanu Prasad, a dalit, and Akhilesh Das, a vaishya. While the first two leaders have limited influence, Das’s community cannot influence the way elections go.

In the case of brahmins, once upon a time a reliable constituency of the Congress, the party hasn’t done any work. The party ignored Rajesh Mishra, MP from Varanasi, who has influence over the community. Yet, it is because of the suspicion that brahmins are going to be a decisive vote in the 2007 elections that Mayawati and Mulayam are desperately wooing them with rallies at regular intervals.

The BJP may also gain support among the brahmins in the wake of the reservations imbroglio. Still, since the brahmins are traditionally known to tilt towards the winner, the gainer is likely to be Mayawati or Mulayam.

In this scenario, the regional satraps are still likely to decide UP and influence the country’s politics. For that, if Mulayam has to endear himself to the BJP, so be it. If Mayawati has to woo the brahmins and vaishyas, so be it.