Raipur Plenary, NE polls see Congress skiing down slope while Rahul tells Cambridge audience ‘Modi blowing India to smithereens’.
In umpteen discourses delivered at home and abroad (latest being at Cambridge business school on 28 February) Rahul Gandhi stresses the need for “negotiation” and “conversation”. Had the primacy of these two words been reflected in his dealings with members of Congress then the scenario which emerged in the Northeast may have been different. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had left Congress to join BJP as he found lack of both. Manipur CM Biren Singh too left Congress for BJP as conversation was missing and negotiation was not attempted. BJP’s Tripura CM Manik Saha (medical professor) and the newly emerged Tripura opposition (Tipra Motha) strongman, Pradyot Debbarma (an erstwhile royal) too are former Congressmen, who too found negotiation or conversation missing. Meghalaya’s NPP leader Conrad Sangma is the son of Congress stalwart P.A. Sangma, who along with Sharad Pawar and Tariq Anwar had complained of asphyxiation in 1999 and quit Congress (Conrad’s sister Agatha was Congress MP and a Union minister). Mukul Sangma, the leader of Trinamool Congress in Meghalaya, had departed with all Congress MLAs two years back due to similar reasons. Examples can be multiplied across geographies. Of course it can be said that all these gentlemen chose the ruling BJP due to lure of power. Politics after all is power play, not a civil society ballgame, as Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra partners like Yogendra Yadav, Medha Patkar or Aruna Roy and the ilk would lead him to believe.
After the Northeast rout, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge commented, “small elections in small states do not affect us much”. In contrast, Narendra Modi, whose party won only two seats in Meghalaya and was junior partner of the winning alliance in Nagaland, while retaining Tripura, which it had wrested from CPI(M)—which had ruled the state over four decades—in 2018, addressed a rally at the BJP headquarters to hail the verdict, recharge his party’s poll juggernaut and began packing his bags to attend the swearing-in ceremony in Shillong, where BJP has rejoined Conrad’s NPP in a coalition it had abandoned pre-poll. The power of conversation and negotiation was unleashed by BJP’s Himanta Biswa Sarma as soon as it became clear that NPP, with whom BJP had parted ways (and against whom it had heaped allegations during the campaign) was emerging as the frontrunner in a hung Assembly.
In sharp contrast, Congress used the Tripura and Meghalaya campaigns to heap personal attacks on Mamata Banerjee. (Result: Mamata has now categorically stated that her party will stay away from Opposition alliances in 2024, a jolt to the eulogy for a front with Congress tom-tommed by DMK supremo M.K. Stalin in the presence of SP RJD and Kharge just a day earlier.) Party’s strategist and media chief Jairam Ramesh described Mukul Sangma as “Judas” (perhaps in sheer disregard to the negativity it reflected in Christian dominated Northeast). With two seats in 2018, BJP had ensured that Congress with 21 was kept out of power in Shillong. In 2023 too no party gained majority in Meghalaya. With its five seats Congress could have bargained to attract the 27 other MLAs (NPP won 26, BJP 2) to form government—but its abuses during campaign and inertness when results were pouring in ensured that BJP’s Machiavellian ways outwitted the twits who were entrusted with Northeast management by the grand old party. Tripura and Nagaland were entrusted to a lightweight who had returned to Congress after party hopping and the Meghalaya in charge was a logistics expert whose forte is organising flights and event management for the leadership. No Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Bhupendra Hooda or D.K. Shivakumar-type leader was deployed. Having won only eight of the 180 seats in the three states which kicked off the prelude to the 2023 polls which herald the 2024 general elections, the Congress downslide was all too visible. Northeast states, also referred to as the “Seven Sisters”, amount for 25 Lok Sabha seats. BJP realises the value of this number. Any attrition in its numbers in the heartland can be made good here. No doubt in his address to BJP cadres on result day Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Purvottar na Dilli se door hai na dil se door hai”.
The Raipur Plenary, the first one to be presided over by a non-Gandhi in three decades, missed the opportunity of revving up the GOP. The two immediately previous non-Gandhi presidents, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesari had ensured CWC polls were held despite opposition from vested interests. Had polls been held Rahul Gandhi’s stature would not have been threatened. The hangers-on around him, who know about their clout in the party, would have stood exposed. Thus both Kharge and Rahul stood out as losers. The well-orchestrated hallelujah—which included laying of a 50 feet bed of rose petals to receive Priyanka Vadra as she stepped into the venue—highlighted sycophancy, not vibrancy, of the party organisation. The Congress gave a call for a united opposition front for 2024. The results of the Assembly byelections in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, which the GOP won due to respective state-level alliances, went unnoticed as seriousness of political discourse has deserted the party. Resolutions are passed only to be consigned to archives. Its leaders are too busy accusing and abusing, wishing that Modi will be “ thrown out”, to throw in “application of mind” (a favourite expression of eminent lawyer Devendra Dwivedi, who as AICC secretary used to lament the lack of it in his party).
In his Cambridge speech Rahul Gandhi said “Modi is blowing India to smithereens” as the basic structure of the idea of India was under attack. He said India being a Union of States there is need for constant negotiation—was he suggesting that the status of the states of the Union was negotiable? Was he influenced by the nuance of the US Constitution where states have the right to secede? In India the Union is full and final as per the Constitution of India. The temporary and transient Article 370 has been abrogated. While referring to his Yatra, he said in Kashmir he had seen a flurry of Indian Tricolour being flaunted by the youth. Till a few years back, when Jammu and Kashmir had a state flag (abolished after 370 went) the Tricolour was a rarity in the valley. Thus while Rahul admitted that the Ujjwala Yojana and Jan Dhan accounts were “good policy”, he unconsciously also acknowledged the efficacy of the Modi government’s policy on Kashmir. As opposition leader Rahul Gandhi may use fora at home and abroad to criticise Modi—but for doing so, need he praise China, which in the minds of the common Indian is a not a friendly neighbour? Ironically, on the day Rahul lamented in Cambridge about lack of manufacturing in India, the decision of Foxconn, the largest assemblers of Apple products to shift manufacturing base to India creating one lakh jobs was announced. In 2019, Rahul’s battle cry, “Chowkidar chor hai” did not cut ice with the electorate. The Supreme Court had warned him and advised him to be more careful in his future remarks. Rahul Gandhi’s discourse at Cambridge did not reflect that he has paid heed to this talisman of the apex court.
Tailpiece: The Bharat Jodo Yatra campaigning was outsourced to an agency, “Teen Bandar”. The Raipur Plenary was entrusted to “Golden Rabbit”—this agency was responsible for the absence of former Congress president Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad (Congress president 1940-46) from the pantheon of leaders portrayed in the full-page advertisement in national media. In the days to come, will the Kharge-Rahul team pull out many more rabbits and bandars from a Gandhi topi?