What’s The Hitch In Congress Leading Post Poll
Coalition Opposite BJP?
Saeed Naqvi
The ghastly
news from Kashmir did cast a shadow, otherwise Lucknow has had a festive February.
The first week was filled with the five day annual Sanatkada jamboree with
fabled Baradari as the festooned focal point. While the mood still lingered,
the city found itself riveted on Priyanka Gandhi’s roadshow with her brother,
the Congress President, Rahul Gandhi in tow.
Those who had
expressed doubts about her ability for hard work must have gasped: she
interviewed candidates all night. Never mind if many of them did not come out
with flying colours: some did not know basic facts about their respective
constituencies.
Diplomats, who
would normally send their Indian staff to study the local mood, have turned up themselves.
While the Congress office at the Mall Avenue is crawling with aspiring netas,
Taj hotel, where both Priyanka and Jyotiraditya Scindia are staying, has enough
security to annoy the hotel’s other guests. Has security obstructed Priyanka
kicking off the campaign with a dip in the Ganga during Kumbh? Congress choreographers
had also floated the idea that a visit to a temple in Srinagar would
authenticate her Kashmiri lineage. Who knows, that expedition may still be
undertaken.
If arithmetics
alone were to determine electoral outcomes, the SP+BSP arrangement in UP is
formidable. But the chemistry of their workers at the constituency level has
been adversarial.
True,
grassroots workers are grappling with instructions from their leaders to tone
down their animosities. But there are other complications, particularly in
Akhilesh Yadav’s camp. His uncle, Shivpal Yadav, is not reconciled to Akhilesh’s
unbridled control over the SP apparatus. So he has opened his own shop to trade
his dwindling clout at the grassroots with anybody eager to damage the BSP-SP
alliance. BJP is so flushed with funds that it will loosen all its purse
strings for Shivpal’s anti Akhilesh mission. The choice is Shivpal’s: pocket
the money or waste it.
Meanwhile,
Mulayam Singh Yadav, founder of SP, is so torn between his son and younger
brother that he waffles something in favour of both alternately. In Parliament
last week he left Sonia Gandhi, like everyone else, in a state of wonder. Making
eye contact with a grinning Narendra Modi he said: “May you come back to power”.
The ear to ear smile on Mulayam’s face was interpreted by most as a clue to a
deep understanding. Mulayam has so far been protected from the Enforcement
Directorate.
“We shall not
be on the back foot” was Rahul Gandhi’s reaction to the insult heaped on the
Congress by SP-BSP distributing nearly all the 80 seats among themselves,
leaving two each for the Congress and RLD. He virtually advanced his proprietary
claim on UP by announcing that his party would contest all 80 seats.
In making this
announcement Rahul fell back once again on a delusion the party has nursed
eversince it dropped to 140 seats after the Babari Masjid debacle. It is aching
to revive. It is well nigh impossible for this desire to be fulfilled. A political
party waxes and wanes, revives and loses, is up and down alternatively only in
a two party system. In a country with 31 states, each with its own shade of
politics, the seesaw model cannot work. The Congress must recognize the reality
of a federal India. Otherwise it will continue to reset its target. Let me
explain.
For 2019, the
declared aim of all parties is to remove the BJP. Mamata Banerjee has grasped
the reality. At the meeting called by AAP at Jantar Mantar Road, she said that
all regional parties must fight the BJP from their respective states and
regions. “The Congress should fight from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh
– states where it has shown that it is strong.”
The Congress
is uncomfortable being so circumscribed. It will not recover from a hangover of
years long past when it was the only political party. In its origins, it represented
diverse interests federated behind a programme for freedom. Subsequently,
almost every political party came out of the Congress womb. Once Krishna Menon,
Congressman closest to the Communists, and S.K. Patil, far right capitalist,
fought the 1957 election on the Congress ticket from different districts of
Bombay (Mumbai). In time, disparate interests, glued together, splintered. In 1967,
eight Indian states had non Congress governments. But the Congress remained in
power in the centre for a simple reason: its social base remained relatively
cohesive. But when in 1990 Mandal Commission report giving reservations in
government jobs to the OBCs whipped up the tempo of caste politics in North
India, the Ram Janmbhoomi agitation was dusted up to promote Hindu
consolidation. This would minimize the settlement at the lower reaches of the
caste pyramid. Hindu consolidation would be best affected by bringing out the “other”
in bolder relief. I have always believed that in India communal politics is a
strategy to manage caste upheaval.
The unease in
Hindu-Muslim relations since Partition, exploded into full blown communalism in
the 90s. It peaked with the demolition of the Babari Masjid on 6 December 1992,
the blame for which the minorities placed at the Congress Prime Minister’s
door. The Muslim voter left the Congress en masse. In the 1996 elections, the
Congress was down to its lowest Lok Sabha tally ever – 140 seats. It hovered around
that figure, leapt to 206 in 2009 (for a range of reasons) and dived to 44 in
2014. Post 9/11 global Islmophobia was a Godsend to Hindutva, compelling the Congress
into temple hopping and relentless cow worshiping for sheer survival.
There are
reasons to believe that the BJP will not be able to repeat its 2014 performance
in 2019. The nation is therefore headed for two distinct coalitions, facing
each other across the aisle. One coalition will be led by the BJP. It is to make
sure that it alone leads the other coalition that the Congress is playing risky
games in UP, Delhi and to some extent West Bengal. In these states it is either
threatening or fighting formations implacably opposed to the BJP.
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