Opinion Vandita Mishra writes: High pitch of ‘vote chori’ campaign marks Congress’s retreat from the hard labour of everyday politics
It has costs for the party and consequences for the polity
Like any player on the losing side, the Congress party has a choice. It can address the challenge in front of it and inside it — or it can give itself a free pass and turn on the rules of the game. (PTI Photo) Evidently, the Congress party is up against tremendous odds. In the BJP it has a formidable opponent whose will-to-power is undimmed by power. The party of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is hard-eyed and unforgiving, relentless and resourceful in its bid to conquer all spaces. At the same time, coinciding with the BJP’s rise and because of it, Congress itself is in unchecked decline, unable to re-imagine its agenda or connect it to the voter, failing to take on its rival or carry along its allies.
Like any player on the losing side, the Congress party has a choice. It can address the challenge in front of it and inside it — or it can give itself a free pass and turn on the rules of the game. Unfortunately for the party, and in a let-down for the polity, Congress has picked the latter option. If there was any doubt about it, its “vote chori” rally in the capital’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday removed it.
This is not to say that there is no unfairness in the “chunav pranali (election process)” currently, or that the “chunav aayog”, EC, is above reproach. And yet, the pitch of the Ramlila Maidan rally — from the stark no-turning-back slogan “vote chor, gaddi chhod (those who stole the election must step down)”, to the uncivil recitation of names of the three election commissioners from the stage by Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, to party president Mallikarjun Kharge‘s ungainly exhortation, “in gaddaron ko hatana hoga (the traitors must be unseated)” — was dispiriting to see.
It was as if India’s main Opposition party was saying that it was now going to take its own pique very seriously, that it was turning its back on the electoral process, not engaging with it to remove the distortions that have crept in.
It signalled that what had seemed to be an often over-wrought campaign of Rahul Gandhi — connecting the dots between disparate electoral data by taking political leaps — now had the imprimatur of the party. And that his distinctive apocalyptic tone — an abdication of the work of democratic politics to negotiate give-and-take solutions in a country of great diversities — will be adopted by his party officially.
Ironically, at Ramlila Maidan, India’s main Opposition party, for the first time in years, looked united and lively. After a long time, the stage was crowded with Congress leaders from different parts of the country, from Manipur to Tamil Nadu and Kashmir. There were PCC presidents, Congress Chief Ministers, MLAs and MPs. All the more disquieting, then, that this apparent unanimity is going to be frittered away on raising spectres, not issues, on stoking suspicion, not in undertaking the hard political reckoning.
So where do we go from here, where does it leave the polity? On one side is the BJP, which wants to take all, leaving no room for opponent or critic. And on the other side, the Rahul-Congress hurls questions without waiting for answers or looking within, pronouncing verdicts of the end of everything.
The BJP is cushioned by its immense power, it dominates the stage and holds the mic. Congress stands to suffer far more from the poor choices it is making. By framing its politics in dire ways, it risks pushing itself more to the margins — its “vote chori” campaign disrespects the BJP’s voter and undermines its own (few) victories.
Like the “Constitution in danger” plank before it, “vote chori” has not struck sparks on the ground, Bihar was the latest confirmation of this. Travelling in the state to report on its election was to meet voters who articulated reasons for turning again to Nitish Kumar and Modi, the former especially. To call the outcome “vote chori”, even if that includes the controversially timed Rs 10,000 cash transfer to women on poll-eve, would be to disregard and alienate those voters.
By setting such a high pitch, Congress is also turning a deaf ear to the sounds of everyday politics, and unseeing the possibilities that arise because of the cracks in the power edifice. What could it say on pollution — on which Rahul has called for a non-partisan parliamentary debate, for instance — in the face of the overpowering “desh/vote ko bachana hai (have to save the country, electoral democracy)” emergency?
And while it is true that in recent times the EC has seemed to increasingly take its cue from the ruling party and conducted itself more as a player than as an impartial referee, as this newspaper recently reported, one of the election commissioners raised the same red flags internally on the SIR vis a vis the vulnerable voter that later came to haunt the exercise externally. They also became the reason for the intervention of the SC.
Were Congress to question itself about the wisdom of the path down which it is careening, it might rewind to a speech of its own leader for some learnings.
At Ramlila Maidan, Priyanka mimicked her brother’s tone. But speaking in the Vande Mataram debate in Lok Sabha a few days earlier, she showed how to separate the issue from the regime — “Vande Mataram” is the nation’s and Congress’s beloved song, she said, the BJP cannot make a debate of it, or claim proprietorship. She smiled at her hecklers, and laughed at them. She laced her arguments, not with sweeping denunciations, but with vignettes of history.
As she counted out the contributions of Jawaharlal Nehru, her main message was not that the BJP has destroyed everything, but that it must acknowledge Congress’s participation in the “Viksit Bharat” it claims to be making.
The writer is national opinion editor, The Indian Express. vandita.mishra@expressindia.com
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