The recent moves of Mamata Banerjee to navigate around the Congress and build a viable coalition of strong regional leaders to take on the BJP seem inevitable, given the paralysis within the Congress and the hindrance it is causing to opposition unity.
The fact that Narendra Modi and the BJP will have the advantage of the TINA (There Is No Alternative) factor so long as the Congress remains at the fulcrum of the opposition has been well known for many years now. Political pundits began talking about it when Modi was halfway through his first term in office, but nobody did anything to sort this out other than offering lip service to the idea of opposition unity.
Then came the general elections of 2019 that saw the BJP cross the 300-mark in the Lok Sabha on its own, with another 50 seats from its alliance partners. When those results arrived, it was clear as daylight to anyone who analysed the strong positive endorsement of Modi’s leadership by the electorate that nobody could mount a challenge to him unless one saw a substantial improvement in the index of opposition unity. However, the Congress, which still functions like a private limited company owned and controlled by a single family, has remained the main stumbling block.
As against a vote share of around 45% in the Lok Sabha elections converting to a seat share of 65–70% in the House during Jawaharlal Nehru’s and Indira Gandhi’s tenures, the party’s vote share has slid to less than 20% now. Consequently, it won just 44 seats in Lok Sabha in 2014 and 53 in 2019. However, the family is unwilling to give up the reins of either the party or of the anti-BJP front and this is compelling other outfits to explore new options. They have realised that unless they identify the problem (the Congress) and publicly declare the need to navigate around it, they cannot pose a challenge to Modi in 2024.
And this is exactly what the head of the Trinamool Congress has set out to do in recent weeks. Apart from making serious efforts to displace the Congress as the main opponent to the BJP in states like Tripura and Goa, Banerjee has been meeting leaders of many parties to push forward her agenda to isolate the Congress and build a new platform. She has also chosen to pronounce the death of the Congress-led UPA and to publicly chide Rahul Gandhi. She is reported to have said: “What is UPA? There is no UPA now … we want a strong alternative.” About Rahul, she said, “If one is abroad half the time, then how can one do politics?”
Meanwhile, another party—the AAP—has also got into the act of appropriating the Congress’s space wherever possible and already made inroads in some states. After literally wiping out the Congress in two successive elections in Delhi, it has made forays into Punjab and is testing the waters in Uttarakhand and Goa. The party has been making wild promises in order to woo the voters and seems to have a different set of goodies for each state. Whatever be its success rate in the coming Assembly elections in these states, one thing is certain—it is going to eat into the Congress’s vote.
But these two parties are only new entrants to the game of gobbling up the votes of the Congress and slipping into its shoes. Regional parties have played a very big role in dislodging the Congress and weakening its electoral base. The process snowballed after the emergence of the Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh and the Janata Party in Karnataka in the early 1980s, the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa in 1997, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in 2001 and the YSR
Congress in 2010. The latest to join the anti-Congress bandwagon is Capt. Amarinder Singh, a credible party leader in Punjab, who was humiliated and shown the door by the Nehru-Gandhis. He has now set up his own regional party to teach the family a lesson.
After having ruled the roost for about 50 years, the Congress has today begun to look like an aged lion that is trudging along, bereft of the ability to hunt and itself becoming the prey.
This is sad because unlike living beings, corporate entities, political outfits and corporations have the ability to reverse the process of aging and defy death, provided they understand where they are faltering, bring in new leadership and fresh ideas, and stop the process of decay.
With the Trinamool and AAP closing in on their prey, the Congress has only one option—to convert itself into a public limited company—and allow shareholders to decide who will be in the driver’s seat. Even today, the party has leaders in Kerala, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and a few other states who enjoy far greater credibility than members of the family that controls it. A broad-based leadership may help the party get back on its feet. But there isn’t much time left. If the family fails to loosen its grip, the party will suffer the same fate as the aged, limping lion of Serengeti.
A Surya Prakash
Former chairman of Prasar Bharati and Scholar, Democracy Studies
(suryamedia@gmail.com)