Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, slowly recovering from the shock his party received in the Bihar assembly polls, has asserted that he would uphold truth and strive to defeat “Modi and Shah.” This looks more like wishful thinking. The BJP is unassailable in several states; and the principal opposition, the Congress, is losing its relevance, including in the prime Hindi belt states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Its position in Madhya Pradesh is a shade better but the party tasted a humiliating defeat in the last LS polls. So too with Maharashtra, not to speak of Gujarat and Rajasthan. The reason for the successive electoral defeats for the party is the lack of any organisational heft for it in state after state. The BJP too does not have much of an organisational might, but two factors help it today – the mass appeal of prime minister Narendra Modi and the ground-level push by the RSS, a cadre-based entity.
Losing the Hindi belt was suicidal for the Congress for the past several years. Sonia Gandhi as party chief had managed to energize the party with her aggressive push. Rahul Gandhi, it would seem, did not carry this forward. His sense of sincerity to the cause is beyond question, but things do not fall in place. The Hindutva plank that the BJP zealously pursues has taken the Hindi belt and beyond by storm through a clever invocation of the religious feelings bordering on spirituality. The Ram Temple issue, for instance has been used by the BJP effectively to neutralize the Mandal mania. The Kamandal plank helped the BJP seize power at the Centre too. The Congress under Rahul Gandhi has failed to come up with a matching political agenda or strategy to whip up the feelings of the masses. Casual exhortations and challenges to the Modi establishment by themselves serve little purpose. As long as the Congress leadership fails to learn lessons from the recent history of political activism, it is unlikely to stage a come-back.
The failure of the Congress party to groom strong leaders with mass appeal in various states is another reason for its failure to win polls. BJP too does not have strong leaders in many states. Its chief ministers are mostly colourless personalities. Modi makes this up with his direct public engagements. Like Indira Gandhi, he plays to the gallery and poses as a saviour of the poor multitudes. The poor are kept on a tasty diet of promises. His social welfare schemes are an attraction to the ordinary masses. There is hardly any Congress leader in most states who is capable of countering the Modi-BJP offensives. States like Bihar have gone from the Congress hands due to the party’s failure to groom strong regional leaders. Karnataka is an exception. Kerala too retains a strong Congress presence through the leadership skills of its state-level leaders. They are giving a strong fight to the well-entrenched CPI-M, as is evident also from their present sweep of the local body polls. Or Revanth Reddy in Telangana, who won the last assembly polls for the party. This is how it should be for the Congress.
