Congress couldn’t get its act together
How did relations between Samajwadi Party and Congress descend, within the space of half a campaign, from flirtation barely disguised by a Lucknow burqa and hints of betrothal to the acrimony of an imminent divorce?
Invective is a jaded weapon: too dull to wound the enemy, and terribly sharp when it inflicts self-injury, as it mostly does. But ridicule scores a flesh wound whenever backed by reason. The Samajwadi heir apparent, Akhilesh Yadav, has just discovered the pleasures of lampoon; significantly his first and only target is Rahul Gandhi. Congress can, if it wants to, shrug off Yadav’s jibe that Rahul began his campaign by rolling up his sleeves, continued by tearing up a simulated Samajwadi manifesto, and will possibly end by jumping off the podium in the last act of such faux dramatics. But it should worry about the fact that the audience is laughing. Nothing disperses the claim of charisma more easily than laughter. Incidentally, whatever happened to the rolled sleeves? They seem to have disappeared.
It takes time to recognise a political pattern, but 45 years is probably enough to shade out the exceptions that prove the rule.
Precisely 45 years ago, in the elections of 1967, Congress began to cede large sections of India to regional parties. Its nadir came in 1967, 1977 and for much of the 1990s, when it teetered in Delhi and disappeared from Amritsar to Calcutta. The high points were 1971-72, when Mrs Indira Gandhi injected the elixir of ideology, and 1984-85, when her martyrdom brought spectacular electoral rewards. But the Congress never recovered the certainty of office that had been its historical privilege between 1952 and 1967.
Mrs Gandhi’s legacy is evident in those forgotten corners of the mind that still shape voter behaviour. She believed in a strong Centre, and subservient state governments that could be dismissed by a stroke of an imperious pen through the application of Article 356. Regional parties fought back, as they are doing now, under the banner of a federal constitution. The voter, who wants, logically, a strong Centre as well as a strong state, began to trust the Congress for Delhi, and other parties for the provinces. Even the success of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA coalition has not fully erased the memory of that disaster called Janata rule between 1977 and 1980. The voter is rarely wrong, and Congress continues to prove him right in the provinces: UPA 2 is in tatters, but the only governments in a deeper hole are Congress governments in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Goa.
The Congress has such a weak reputation in states that it has been unable to exploit fractious splits in regional parties, which is akin to missing a penalty. Instead, such a regional split has delayed or even aborted a Congress revival. In Tamil Nadu, the Congress would have been elected when people became tired of DMK’s mercurial ways. Instead, its splinter Anna DMK became the successor, and remains so 25 years after founder M G Ramachandran’s death.
In Bihar, Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar lived, albeit uncomfortably, within the same party. Lalu captured Bihar, and had a wonderful run. When his ego-and-caste inflated bubble was finally punctured, it was Nitish who won Patna, not the Congress. Nitish promises to keep the Congress out of office in Bihar for even longer than Lalu did.
In Bengal, the regional force, the Left, did not split, but the Congress did. Once again, when the Left collapsed, the voter trusted Mamata Banerjee as the alternative, not the Congress. Maharashtra has seen a further variation. Congress and its breakaway bit, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, set aside their internal bitterness to make successful common cause against the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. Now, when their alliance is beginning to fray, it is the Congress which has taken the greater drubbing as compared to NCP. Check the latest local government results.
In Uttar Pradesh, Congress collapsed 22 years ago. Mulayam Singh Yadav and BJP took turns in office. When voters became tired of these two, they did not seek out Congress but went to a fourth force, Mayawati. It is an interesting thought: Would Congress have had a chance in the current Punjab elections if a second Akali Dal had emerged and consolidated itself?
Rahul Gandhi’s advisers are blessed with enthusiasm; maybe this is why a sober reading of the past eludes them. I have no idea whether the Congress is going to do well or badly, but it was risky to turn the UP poll into the springboard for a Rahul pole vault. It is embarrassing if you huff and you puff and then go through under the bar.
Bookies have a better feel for ground reality than astrologers or journalists. On February 21, they were offering even bets on these figures: 120-130 seats for SP; 100-110 for BSP; 80-90 for BJP; and 50-60 for Congress. If this is true, then the past still has some claim on the present.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.