Barely a week after the five state elections in Telangana, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the Congress party is older but not wiser. In Telangana, the party won handsomely and Revanth Reddy was sworn in as CM. But Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh have gone the BJP way. Add UP to the cart, and it is clear that mainland Hindi-speaking India believes in the Hindu triumvirate: Ram, Hanuman and Narendra Modi.
This is not just a question of the North-South divide, though it is generally accepted as the most fashionable explanation that the liberals have adopted only because it is reassuring to their vanity. The reassurance that the South is more sophisticated and secular than the North and so opted for the Congress—or the CPM, or the DMK.
Generally speaking, the liberals are double-dopamine seekers, suffering from chronic victimhood and vengeance-seeking. Branding South India as superior puts paid to their emotional needs: I told you so. But it does not explain the Congress party’s exploded political strategy.
It is precisely this secular and liberal superciliousness that is repeatedly misleading the Congress-skippered opposition to live in a self-perpetuating bubble. Not only are they talking to themselves and getting excited at the mutual applause, but they are growing increasingly blind to the reality.
And the reality is that you cannot run a campaign identifying Gautam Adani as the single ill—crony capitalism—plaguing India. It demoralises the business community. That getting rid of Adani will solve the severest economic problems and that Adani in many ways is Modi by other means. It is like political extremists believing in individual extermination as a solution.
Ridding Adani is one thing, and rather easily said. The fact is that he does contribute to the economy and employs thousands of people. By implication, too, other business tycoons are made out to be some kind of angels. And then to make Modi merge with the Adani identity to the supportive snorts on social media, liberals ran the risk of simplifying the assembly polls to the level of a college union election, no matter how indefatigable Rahul Gandhi has been in his campaigns.
The Congress hasn’t got its head around the issue. All that the highly intelligent and articulate Rahul lieutenants such as Jairam Ramesh—K C Venugopal has muted himself—said in an explanatory tweet is: “It is true that the performance of the Indian National Congress in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan was disappointing and far below our expectations. But the vote shares tell a different story of a Congress that is not very behind the BJP—in fact, it is within striking distance. This is the reason for hope and revival…’’ He goes on to give the percentage as varying roughly between over 2 (Rajasthan) to 8 (MP). But in elections, as in a rocket launch, missing by an inch is missing by a mile. No, they haven’t got it yet.
Besides the anti-Adani campaign and the advocacy of reckless welfare schemes—though it is near impossible to beat Modi’s BJP in the matter of largesse distribution, as a recent book, The New BJP, by Nalin Mehta, shows—a chief plank of the Rahul campaign was the caste census and women empowerment. The caste census would, according to Rahul, help right the representation skew in favour of the underprivileged classes in services and other sectors. For all its idealism, this measure, if mechanically adhered to, would throw merit altogether out of the window, and the results would lead to great social and political instability.
As for women, the BJP government at the Centre—and the states—has been going all out to empower them, including through free transport and direct cash transfers under Nari Shakti schemes. An aside. Social welfare schemes are necessary, but when parties compete to distribute the largesse it assumes the nature of legal bribery.
To get back to the caste factor. What the Congress has not figured out is why neither the caste and minority nor the women vote failed to consolidate in its favour. Despite Rahul Gandhi’s inspirational Bharat Jodo Yatra and his efforts to break out of the urban orbit, the underprivileged classes have not united behind him in any real sense.
Indeed, in Chhattisgarh, the appointment of Vishnu Deo Sai, a tribal leader, as the new CM, shows where the tribal votes—which make up over 30 per cent of the population—have gone: to the BJP, not the Congress. The rejection of the party as the representative of the underprivileged is shaping to be the single most major Congress problem.
As of last week, Rahul Gandhi has been somewhat missing in action. When the admirable Mahua Moitra was expelled from parliament, he was not seen along with the INDIA opposition leaders. Soon after the poor election results, the Moitra controversy came as a face-saving distraction. Following the politically correct cue, Moitra is now seen as the cause for opposition unity. Never mind that there is nothing in the remotest that is underprivileged about Moitra, even though the expelled MP has emphasised her gender—and the BJP’s perceived misogyny—as the chief reason for the way she has been treated. If Moitra is the newfound reason for the Congress-led opposition unity, it rests on a narrow personality plank and the party would be allowing a regional power like the TMC to find a disproportionate political prominence. If, on the other hand, the Congress continues with the caste and women empowerment plank, they must reason out why it is not translating into a decisive vote share despite all-out efforts.
There is very little time. The 2024 summer—and the general election—is almost here. With the BJP more than ever entrenched in the heartland and at the Centre, the odds are clear. As Muhammad Ali said to a tiring but younger and bigger Foreman before knocking him down in the 8th round of their 1974 fight in Zaire: “George you got two chances: slim and none.”
C P Surendran
Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B
(Views are personal.)