As this column is being written, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is passing through Jharkhand. Wherever he goes, he seems to be drawing a crowd. Often, he sits down with them, and the representative circle around him usually comprises young men and women, especially young women in jeans: independent-spirited liberals who find reassurance in Rahul Gandhi’s comradely presence.
They sing songs after the spirit of ‘Hum honge kamyab (We shall overcome)’. Then they break up and Rahul Gandhi proceeds to another place. The scene repeats with slight variation. Do these singers and similar ‘Sufi’ spirits mean anything at all in terms of real politics? The nature of these gatherings is more befitting of a college election, perhaps.
In the first phase of the yatra last year, one could view the expedition with some hope. But in the assembly elections held after it, the results were not happy for the Congress except in Telangana.
Even though some sympathetic media people are trying to pitch a theory that the Congress gained voters along the yatra belts that Rahul Gandhi covered, there is no real statistical evidence of an actual co-relationship between the walk and votes. In any case, it cannot have been of any real consequence, given the assembly results.
As the general election approaches, the Nyay Yatra increasingly appears to be counterproductive. In Bihar, for example, even as the yatra was making merry, Nitish Kumar, who represents the actual gutter that heartland politics is, found in it an opportune moment to split from the INDIA bloc, resign as the Bihar chief minister, and be sworn in again with the support of the BJP—all in the space of three days.
He was a key ally of the opposition. It is a measure of the dysfunctional nature of the Indian version of democracy that the people who voted Nitish Kumar to power in the first instance as the sworn enemy of the BJP can do little once they come out of the polling booths. Even as they exit, their leader has completely shed all his cells and become a new man.
Last week, as Rahul Gandhi waved, smiled and sang his way through West Bengal, another key ally, Mamata Banerjee, said she would have no truck with the Congress, as unity between the CPM and Congress would work against the interests of her Trinamool Congress.
Last year, when Rahul Gandhi was traveling through Kerala, the CPM had expressed its reservations owing to local political priorities. Now, the Kerala Left Front says Rahul Gandhi must vacate the Wayanad constituency so they can contest from there. The point is that regional politics is a highly fluid matrix.
The problem with the new yatra is not just what Prashant Kishor has been saying: Rahul should be at the party HQ, not out in the field, so that political equations could be forged, organisational decisions made and strategies devised. This does not make much sense as Rahul Gandhi had made clear at the time of the party’s presidential election that these aspects would be taken care of by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, and that he would be out in the field. This is not a bad strategy, as it shows that Rahul Gandhi realises his limitations. Admittedly, he is not good at closed-door talks.
But the problem is that he is unable to translate his field work to votes. For just one reason. The priorities of survival of regional parties—some of them INDIA bloc allies—are at loggerheads with those of a national party like the Congress. The latter’s life is the former’s death.
Every time the opposition comes together, it is advantage Congress and the near obliteration of the regional parties’ identity. Why would they destroy themselves to see Narendra Modi defeated? One could easily say that Modi is the reason why Mamata, for example, is alive and kicking. Indeed, it is in the interest of the regional leaders to keep Modi alive as a vital national force. They define their identity and relevance in opposition to Modi.
Now that Rahul Gandhi is committed to the yatra, he has no option but to complete it. He would be back in Delhi sometime in the third week of March. Back in Delhi, the one thing he might want to do is stop talking about love.
Indian politics is not Sufi land, as Modi knows only too well. This is why he chooses to believe in the Machiavellian dictum that a leader must inspire fear rather than love to stay in power. What Rahul Gandhi could really do—since he and his party have no real alternative economic vision to offer, only good wishes—is to do the one thing that might alter the election results in the booths themselves.
This is to contest the electronic voting machine or EVM model of elections. Although the Supreme Court made an oral observation in November that enhancing the scale of cross-checking EVM data against voter-verifiable paper audit trail records would increase the Election Commission's work without bringing any 'big advantage’, the fact that the source code of the machine itself is supervised by a committee comprising BJP officials, and the constitution of the committee picking future commissioners been altered to suit the ruling party, it stands to reason that the machines be counterbalanced with paper.
Given that the opposition is increasingly splintering instead of coming together as the deadline approaches, the EVM might be the biggest factor that might help Congress and its warring partners to better results. Therefore, they should be trying to legally delay the elections based on the EVM issue.
But nothing quite dispels the prospect of the one-party democracy that India has become. Never has the future been easier to read: there will be more temples. And there will be only one pratishtha.
C p Surendran
Poet, novelist and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B