A cry of despair from a Congress sympathiser—who is so passionate about the party’s travails that he could be a faceless member in an ocean of sycophants—framed the ills afflicting the Congress far more perceptively than the reams tumbling out of ‘informed’ analyses following the BJP’s comeback in Delhi. But Ranchod Das Chanchad’s ‘open letter’ to Rahul Gandhi on X was likely lost in the pile of emails or old-fashioned epistles reaching Gandhi and his staff. In any case, it’s whispered that the Gandhi scion is hostile to even well-intended criticism.
Congress’s joyous celebration of AAP’s rout—framed as a revenge for Sheila Dikshit’s defeat by Arvind Kejriwal in 2015—was intriguing to say the least because the party itself was annihilated in the national capital. Without mincing words, Chanchad posted, “Our obsession with Arvind Kejriwal is misplaced. He didn’t destroy Congress in Delhi, our own complacency did.” Among the points Chanchad raised were the “hypocrisy” embedded in Congress’s federalism stand that manifested in the party’s social media warriors “openly questioning the very existence of regional parties”, fixing one’s own house before mocking others, and either reinventing the party or fade into oblivion.
In the euphoria over AAP’s fade-out, the Congress has not cared to reflect on its own role and conduct in the Delhi polls or even attempt to nail the local leaders who reportedly counselled Gandhi to assail Kejriwal and AAP instead of attacking the BJP.
The Congress’s conflicted stand over seeking regional electoral partners has significant implications for the virtually defunct INDIA bloc that beamed a ray of hope in the opposition when it was launched in Bihar in July 2023. It was meant to be a big-tent coalition of ‘progressive’ federal forces to challenge the BJP-led NDA.
The Congress arrogated to itself the right to head INDIA by virtue of its national presence, but none of the other parties were willing to concede leadership to the Gandhis. The bloc has since unravelled. Nitish Kumar, who cheerfully piloted the project as part of a ‘secular’ coalition, was the first to jump ship and embrace the BJP.
The Janata Party and Janata Dal experiments of the past—a ragtag of state parties wedded together by the anti- Congress glue—at least took off and made a go of it until the ideological contradictions between the BJP and some others became irreconcilable. For the BJP, more than the egos nursed by its leaders such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, it was the RSS’s pressure to work towards getting an independent majority on the Hindutva plank that scuppered the Janata coalitions.
To be noted, however, is the BJP’s exemplary pragmatism towards the so-called smaller participants when help was needed in cobbling the numbers required for a majority in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures. The Congress, on the other hand, could never shed the aura of being the ‘grand old party’ and a self-anointed supremo.
Today, the BJP holds power in 12 states on its own, and with an ally, the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar. It has NDA chief ministers in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Meghalaya. In contrast, the Congress can call just three states as its own. It is part of the coalition governments in J&K and Jharkhand, and a constituent of the DMK-led compact in Tamil Nadu. It was part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi and Mahagathbandhan governments in Maharashtra and Bihar, which could not complete their tenures.
Regardless of the Delhi verdict, is the Congress positioned to disparage regional parties on whose backs it rides in at least five states? Any party in its place, grand or unprepossessing, would be casting round for partners to face a slew of impending elections.
In Maharashtra, the MVA, consisting of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), NCP (Sharad Pawar) and Congress, exists notionally. Uddhav, a former chief minister who lost most of his MLAs to a BJP-engineered coup, declared his intent to fight the prestigious local body polls in Maharashtra solo. The cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is on his radar as well as the BJP’s. NCP chief Sharad Pawar, wounded as much as Uddhav from the defections his party was subjected to, will need a miracle to revive the original NCP. The Congress is rudderless as its allies are looking for life away from the Gandhis.
In Tamil Nadu and Bihar, the Congress will willy-nilly have to ride on the back of the DMK and RJD, while in J&K, after its poor showing in Jammu, it has no choice but to go by the NC’s diktat. In Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party put up an impressive performance in the Lok Sabha election, there’s no way its chief Akhilesh Yadav will yield more seats to the Congress than what he deems deserving.
Rather than the federal forces, the Congress is fast losing its salience within INDIA or what remains of it. The Congress treated the AAP, notionally an INDIA constituent, as its arch-enemy in Delhi. It got a shock when Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar announced their support for the AAP, although materially it made no difference.
The prospect of regional parties, loosely aligned with the Congress, banding together to form a separate non-Congress coalition cannot be ruled out because those like Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR (Congress) might find such a formation more palatable than Congress’s INDIA.
Can ideology be a cementing element in today’s circumstances? The BJP has artfully finessed the skill of blending ideology with the lure of power to add to its strength. The Congress’s ideology remained fuzzy in the post Mandal-mandir era. Regional parties, including the socialist-secular adherents, couldn’t care less about ideology, mouthing their anti-BJP rhetoric for the consumption of the religious minorities.
Bihar, which votes this year, will be a test for the RJD-led opposition and the NDA, more for the former. A victory for the RJD might spur regional forces to think afresh of putting up a joint front against the BJP. Conversely, a reversal could put the clock back.
(Views are personal)
(ramaseshan.radhika@gmail.com)
Radhika Ramaseshan | Columnist and political commentator