Opinion Suhas Palshikar writes: Opposition needs to carve out space for itself amid BJP’s near-dominance

However, AAP quickly ended up being just another party. Its heavy dependence on a personality cult was only a pale imitation of what the BJP has achieved since 2014. From its stance during the Delhi riots to its stand on Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, it sought to look like the BJP either because it was actually much closer to the Hindutva ideology or at least because it cynically wished to retain Delhi’s pro-Modi vote by not antagonising it.

Above all, AAP had little to offer substantively to electorates beyond Delhi. From Goa to Gujarat, it attempted to breach the existing structure of party competition but failed. Its success in Punjab, like in Delhi, was based on the exhaustion of an existing local party — if in Delhi, it was Congress, in Punjab, it was the Akali Dal. The AAP experiment, therefore, shows that irrespective of spectacular entries, the space for new entrants is narrow, uncertain and dependent on equations among existing players. As the BJP consolidates its dominance, the failure of the AAP model signals that competitiveness is unlikely to emerge from self-proclaimed extra-systemic mavericks.

But if “outsiders” are unlikely to pose a challenge to the BJP, is a party like Congress, representing an old order, any better placed?

In Delhi, Congress has again shown that it is oblivious to the critical role thrust upon it by the present moment. If routine internal feuds marked its failure in Haryana and organisational laziness caused its debacle in Maharashtra, a suicidal approach marked its third consecutive failure in the NCR. Since 1989, Congress has ceased to be an all-India party; it’s a multi-state party at best. It has not been able to put up a fight in traditional strongholds like Maharashtra, nor take advantage of bipolarity in states like Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat; it has not even captured the opposition space in a state like Odisha. In the backdrop of these limitations, the party needed more tactical acumen to ensure the BJP was kept out of power in Delhi.

After the Lok Sabha elections, Congress may have been under the impression that the BJP was now a weaker party in government. But just about 100 seats do not make an Opposition strong. The pyrrhic victories in getting a few bills sent to select committees do not make the government any weaker. Unless the opposition parties are able to force changes in draft bills, unless unacceptable proposals are forced to be withdrawn, unless alternative proposals — as in the case of election schedules or the UCC etc. — are made popular, unless undemocratic governance practices are de-popularised, there is no political pushback.

The lessons from the Delhi defeats, for Congress, AAP and other opposition parties, are not just about where they went wrong tactically. Beyond such immediate considerations, they have three intermediate lessons to learn. One is about the challenge of expanding one’s own party and at the same time building bridges with other parties. This balancing requires a hard-nosed understanding of one’s limitations and an investment in organisation-building.

The second lesson is the need to identify the most proximate voter for the party. It’s true that every party would want to attract voters across social sections, but beyond that broader ambition, it is essential to locate the strongest support the party is likely to gain. Tactically, it is useful to know the disappointed BJP voters, but that need not mean giving up on the core social base visualised by each of the non-BJP parties. Of late, much has been said about possible middle-class disenchantment, but the Opposition needs to ask whether it wants to fight on the BJP’s turf and for the BJP’s own strongholds or wishes to gain from a different register of social support. It needs a balance between the proximate voter and the ruling party’s disgruntled voters.

The third lesson — starkly exemplified by AAP’s case — is: How to be different. If AAP doesn’t take on the BJP’s Hindutva, if the TMC doesn’t adopt a more democratic governance model, if Congress in Karnataka or Telangana is not content merely to compete with the BJP in terms of so-called “welfare schemes”, only then can the Opposition carve out a space for itself in the present moment of near-dominance of the BJP.

Clearly, the Delhi elections, the withering of the Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra and the overall dispersal of the INDIA bloc signal that the Opposition is losing steam — mainly because the ideological flourish that characterised the christening of INDIA has quietly faded away. This is mainly because beyond the immediate and the intermediate, the Opposition lacks in perspective.

More than anything else, the opposition parties forget two critical things about the current political moment: One, in the continuing reign of the ruling party, there is a continuing erosion of space for the Opposition itself — therefore, there is a very selfish reason the parties need to get their act together. Two, the only pushback the ruling establishment would really recognise is an electoral pushback. Therefore, a few stray judicial observations, a few legislative compromises or some occasional softening of the rawness of power don’t really mean much in the long-drawn battle.

If after June last year, the Opposition has not shown awareness of the first critical point, the Delhi elections show that Congress and AAP have both chosen to ignore the second — something central to their own survival.

The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science