Opinion Old whines,new voters

Rahul Gandhi has said he would study in greater detail what went wrong with Congress’s strategy in UP. In a sense,the UP debacle should enable both introspection and course correction,if there is a willingness to do so.

To understand what went wrong,the Congress must closely study the content and style of the campaign run by the Samajwadi Party,which proudly proclaims its sustenance from Dr Ram Manohar Lohia’s socialist ideals. Lohia socialists have been known for their politics of bitter anti-Congressism through the years when Nehru,and later,Indira Gandhi,dominated Indian politics. Lohiaites were also widely perceived as negative and disruptive in their politics,prone to seeing the glass as always half empty.

In fact,in the 1960s,there was a running debate between Nehru and Lohia on the real extent of poverty in India. The debate was popularly described as “teen anna pandrah anna” (3 annas and 15 annas). Lohia claimed that the vast majority of the people lived under 3 annas (less than a quarter of a rupee) a day. Nehru countered Lohia by quoting Planning Commission data suggesting the average daily income of the poor was roughly 15 annas a day,which was close to a rupee. Lohia rejected the Planning Commission finding as bogus. Was it mere coincidence that Rahul Gandhi too was rejecting the knowledge and research proffered by the Planning Commission in his well attended public meetings during the UP campaign?

So it may be an irony of sorts that Nehru’s legatee,Rahul Gandhi,today sounds more like a Lohiaite in the angry way in which he puts forth his ideas on poverty and development. In contrast,the self-styled claimant of the Lohia tradition,Akhilesh Yadav,frames his political messages in a manner which is more positive and aspirational. This has been noted by many political commentators who visited UP recently.

Many of Rahul’s speeches were seen as excessively negative as he virtually harangued the landless farm labourers for accepting a life of backbreaking,menial work or begging at traffic lights in big cities. In one of his big public meetings at a Dalit dominated area called Bhognipur outside Kanpur,one was struck by Rahul’s rhetorical description of the drudgery of a landless worker without proper clothes to cover himself with. The sheer tenor and abjectness of Gandhi’s physical description of the poor tiller took one back to Bimal Roy’s classic experiment at neorealist cinema Do Bigha Zameen (1953). The film portrays the plight of a debt-ridden farmer (played by Balraj Sahni) who is reduced to pulling a rickshaw in the city to save his land.

The one problem with Rahul playing the angry rebel,reminiscent of the Lohia mould,is that his party has been in power at the Centre for seven years now. While state elections are held around local issues,the sheer fatigue and drift shown by the Congress-led government at the Centre is increasingly having its negative impact on state elections. For instance,when Rahul Gandhi angrily asks why the daily wage workers of UP don’t even get basic living facilities in Delhi where they travel to build projects like the Delhi Metro,does it occur to him that the governments at the Centre as well as in Delhi are run by his party? The plain fact is,growing anti-incumbency at the Centre is serving as a nice electoral topping for regional parties in successive state elections. So much so,a top Congress leader in Maharashtra told this writer that the poor image of the government at the Centre had its effect even in the municipal elections in Maharashtra recently.

It is this overarching sentiment against the Centre which might have helped the Akali Dal defeat the Congress and retain power in Punjab. By itself,Akali Dal’s record of providing a clean and transparent administration has been far from satisfactory. Yet it managed to beat state level anti-incumbency,possibly because of a more powerful anti-Congress feeling caused by the governance deficit at the Centre. This phenomenon will be tested again in Gujarat where elections are to be held end of this year.

Another underlying theme in the just concluded polls seems to be that the voters have expressed disappointment with the BJP equally. Sudheendra Kulkarni,who assisted the party in the UP elections,publicly conceded that the BJP had not been able to exploit the overall anti-Congress sentiment sweeping across most states that went to the polls. One reason why the BJP might be getting short shrift from the voters is that it has been seen as playing a negative and duplicitous role as the main opposition party at the Centre. In the past year or so,the BJP’s role in parliamentary functioning has been aimless and negative,to say the least.

While the two national parties are increasingly perceived as negative in their orientation,some of the regional parties seem to coming across as more responsible and sensitive to the development needs of the people. In fact,the upper caste backlash against Mayawati would seem to be more a result of some development — with Dalits getting a good share of it — rather than a lack of it. Uttar Pradesh is possibly witnessing a new phase of caste consolidation as a consequence of development rather than lack of it. Even in her defeat,Mayawati has retained about 26 per cent vote share,just 2.7 per cent behind the SP. If Mulayam Singh does not deliver on the development agenda,the same upper castes and Muslims will seamlessly shift to Mayawati next time and give her the extra 3 to 4 per cent vote share required.

It is also clear that if the two national parties are unable to respond to the development imperatives,the regional political outfits,with a better understanding of the ground realities,will fill the vacuum in the next Lok Sabha elections.

The writer is managing editor,‘The Financial Express’
mk.venu@expressindia.com