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Journalism of Courage
Rahul Gandhi has walked the extra mile, while his party Congress has swallowed pride and joined a band of disparate Opposition parties to stop the Narendra Modi juggernaut and announced, perhaps for the first time, a raft of poll promises even before the election schedule was announced.
Despite these unprecedented political moves, the Congress is entering the Lok Sabha battlefield with just a flicker of hope of a repeat of the 2004 verdict.
Its grand plan to ensure that there is one Opposition candidate against the BJP in 400 plus Lok Sabha seats has not fully materialised — there will still be Opposition coalitions in several states — and the INDIA alliance has struggled to sustain its momentum after its much-hyped launch in Patna last year largely because of internal divisions and bickerings besides some high-profile exits.
The Congress is also entering the Lok Sabha campaign perhaps with a sense of deja vu.
In 2019, its campaign had two broad themes — the “chowkidar chor hai” line of attack against Prime Minister Modi over the Rafale fighter jet deal, and the ambitious promise of a minimum income guarantee to the poor, or NYAY as it was called. And now, with the party having revived NYAY, revelations about the nature of anonymous contributions to political parties through electoral bonds will form the dual core of its attack.
The grand old party has added one more layer — a relentless pitch for a caste census and the talk of representation for the OBCs, Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). The Congress hopes that its OBC, tribal and Dalit gambit will have a resonance, and its welfare promises would strike a chord. The party believes there is “silent anger” brewing against the BJP government among the youth over lack of jobs and among the lower middle class and poor families because of the rise in the cost of living.
But the main Opposition party appears has been struggling to build a political discourse and narrative that the BJP can be defeated and that the INDIA bloc can be its credible alternative. The faltering alliance is yet to come up with a common programme, or articulate a clear governance agenda. Not even once have the alliance partners managed to bring all its top leaders together on one single public platform. The best case scenario, for many in the Congress, is a repeat of a 2004-like verdict, when the BJP’s “India Shining” campaign had come a cropper.
With Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD walking out of the INDIA bloc and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) all but snapping ties with it, the alliance no longer looks formidable and perhaps lacks a national appeal. The Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh and the AAP-Congress seat sharing arrangement in Delhi have come as just cold comfort to it. There will, of course, be seat sharing pacts in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Maharashtra and Jharkhand — those alliances pre-date the formation of the INDIA bloc.
The Congress hopes Rahul’s Yatras — the second one centered around the theme of “Nyay” — have struck a chord with the people. The promises it has announced so far are tailored for and focused on the unemployed youth, women, tribals, Dalits, the working class and the farmers, and dovetail into the larger theme of justice — social, economic and political.
North India, however, remains the Achilles heel for the Congress. The party believes it would perform well in Kerala and Telangana, manage to halve the BJP’s tally in Karnataka and sweep Tamil Nadu along with the senior partner DMK.
The Congress was decimated in the Hindi heartland both in 2014 and 2019, resulting in the party plunging to its all time low tally of 44 in 2014 and 52 in the last Lok Sabha elections.
In 2019, the Congress could win only one each in Uttar Pradesh (Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli), Bihar (Kishanganj) and Madhya Pradesh (Chhindwara), which account for 149 seats. It could not open its account in Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It won two seats in Chhattisgarh and one in Jharkhand. So the party had won just 6 of the 225 Lok Sabha seats spread across 10 states in the heartland.
While the Pulwama attack and the Balakot strike had derailed the Congress momentum in 2019, the party this time is facing a Hindutva-nationalism cocktail in the form of the Ram temple consecration, abrogation of Article 370 and talk around CAA.
The big question is whether the Congress would be able to make a comeback in the Hindi speaking states, where the BJP hopes the consecration of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya will have a huge appeal. Added to that would be the BJP’s poll pitch around the CAA, Sanatan Dharma and the UCC. The Congress or the INDIA bloc have no counter-narrative to the BJP on these issues — the only argument made by Rahul had been about the star-studded guest list at the Temple opening and the lack of commoners there.
The Congress now has spent its longest time out of power — surpassing its eight-year stint in political wilderness from 1996 to 2004. The party has its formidable task cut out to tide over its existential crisis and touch the three-digit mark in the upcoming polls.
In a break from past, the Congress has this time named 82 candidates even before the announcement of the poll dates. Also, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) is meeting on March 19 to approve its poll manifesto.
