The disqualification of Rahul Gandhi has given cause and momentum to the opposition alliance. But will it hold?
No, not unless Congress and the regional parties arrive at a relationship of equal partnership. An unequal relationship is what has been holding back opposition unity. The regional parties outside the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) argued that a shrunken Congress had forfeited its claim to the opposition leadership. The Samajwadi Party leader, Akhilesh Yadav, said the regional parties were ‘giants’ and the Congress must support them. They wanted Congress to play an auxiliary role, not the principal role. They would be Ram, the Congress Lakshman!
You could not deny the regional parties a little bit of attitude. They were expanding, the Congress was contracting. In West Bengal, the Congress today has no MLA (0%) in a house of 294 and in UP, merely 2 (0.5%) in a house of 403. In 2019, Congress lost 9 out of 10 seats in the Hindi-speaking states to the BJP. It lost most of the recent state elections in a direct contest to the BJP.
In contrast, the regional parties vanquished the BJP not only in the Assembly elections but also in the Lok Sabha elections. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won 34 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and 211 of the 294 Assembly seats in 2016. That showed that most voters in West Bengal were unipolar: they voted for the same party in Assembly and parliamentary elections. That was not the case when Congress was in a direct contest with the BJP. In those states, a majority of voters were bipolar voters. They voted for one party in the state elections and another in the parliamentary elections. In Rajasthan, they gave the Congress a near-majority in the Assembly in 2018, but in 2019 gave 24 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats to the BJP.
The trend, however, is that even unipolar voters in states dominated by the regional parties are turning bipolar. In the West Bengal Assembly elections of 2021, the TMC numbers rose from 211 to 215, but in the Lok Sabha elections of 2022, they dropped from 34 to 22. The BJP, which had won only 2 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, grabbed 18 seats in 2019 in the state. It is the transformation of unipolar voters into bipolar voters that is bugging the regional parties. That is why they are asking for Congress support to make up for the loss of unipolar votes to the BJP. That is why Akhilesh Yadav wants Congress to play Lakshman to them.
However, the truth is the regional parties have limitations. They cannot provide a national alternative to the BJP. Their popularity is within the state. They have built their political estate on the foundations of regional identity and subaltern victimhood. Their leaders are not looked at as national figures. Then there is a history of quick mortality of third fronts.
Here is where the Congress assumes importance for an opposition alliance. Despite its dwarfing, it remains a party with a national organisation, national leadership and a national appeal. It alone has a national narrative into which the regional parties can weave their regional narratives to beat the BJP, which stands for decimating regionalism.
The regional parties and the Congress will have to put aside their sense of superiority. An alliance cannot work without both sides accepting each other as equal partners: no Lakshman, all Rams.
Once that happens, it will be easier for them to choose a leader. The latest Congress position is that to them, opposition unity is paramount. “We are not adamant on leading the front,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has said. A resolution at the Congress’ 85th plenary at Raipur said, “It is the only party that can provide effective and decisive leadership to the country, but it is ready to make sacrifices to defeat the BJP-led NDA.” That has opened doors for regional parties to pitch their leaders for the alliance leadership. It can be Mamata, Nitish, Stalin or Kejriwal if it is not Rahul.
The Congress ceding claim to leadership is one of the key reasons all the opposition parties have come together on a platform. The obvious triggers are the relentless hounding of opposition leaders by the central investigative agencies and the ‘conspiracy’ to disqualify Rahul Gandhi. Still, the alliance leadership being open has given momentum to building an opposition alliance.
However, an alliance harping on ‘Opposition victimhood’ will not do. The architecture of Narendra Modi’s success rests on the five pillars of Hindu victimhood, jingoism, corruption-free governance, fast growth and poverty alleviation. The alliance has to win over people with an alternative architecture. Until now, only party workers have been participating in opposition protests. People are not coming forward to join them. Why? Because the opposition has not offered an attractively different architecture to pull them out of Modi’s ocean of spells. For instance, the opposition parties have been confused about how to counter the Modi narrative of Hindu victimhood. Sometimes they swim with the current of Hinduphilia, sometimes against it.
The alliance must also offer an alternative political organisation to run the country. The UPA earned damning disrepute for scams and wretched alliance management. The Modi narrative draws much of its vitamins from this cesspool of disrepute. What safeguards would the opposition alliance ensure so governance does not fall into the same pit?
Lastly, the opposition alliance has to offer an alternative leader. The leader has to have a strong profile that inspires confidence that they could give the country better politics and economy.
ARUN SINHA
Independent journalist and author