2022 is the Year of the Big Test, both for Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
New Delhi: It was Home Minister Amit Shah who recently stated that the road to 2024 is via 2022, at a rally in Lucknow. And he is not wrong. The New Year will debut with the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. This is a state that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha and is also the state where the Prime Minister has his constituency. Currently, the BJP is in power, but will Chief Minister Yogi Adityanth be able to hold onto his bastion? As recently as September 2021, all the opinion polls and analysts had given the BJP a substantial winning margin, but from November onwards, the Samajwadi Party-RLD alliance seems to be making its presence felt, especially in western Uttar Pradesh.
How crucial is it for the Modi-Yogi duo to retain Uttar Pradesh? Well, the stakes are certainly higher for the CM as he would be out of his current job if he loses, while the PM has lost the odd Assembly election for the BJP, and yet retained his place at the Centre. (There is a view that even if Yogi loses Uttar Pradesh, all is not lost for him, as the RSS will insist on his being accommodated within the Modi Cabinet, but that will be a very poor consolation prize. Ask Sarbanada Sonowal, the ex Chief Minister of Assam who is now a low-profile Union Minister). However, if the Opposition manages to wrest UP from the BJP (and that too at a time when the Ram Mandir has got the go-ahead) then the optics would be very grim for the party faithful. Narendra Modi would probably remain Prime Minister but he would lose considerable heft and one may see the old guard suddenly raising its head from the sidelines to where it has currently been consigned.
That apart, the stakes are much higher for the Opposition. Last year ended on a note of churn within the anti BJP parties, with Mamata Banerjee challenging the Congress party’s right to lead the Opposition. To prove that she is much more than just a regional leader, Mamata is hoping to expand her base in Goa and Manipur in the coming five Assembly polls. If she fails to make a dent, then she will have to take a step back, for then she will be no better than Arvind Kejriwal, who is also trying to expand his base beyond Delhi. The Aam Admi Party has ambitiously fielded candidates in Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. From all these it is Punjab which is the low hanging fruit, where the AAP is already the single largest Opposition party and emerged as the single largest party in the Chandigarh municipal polls last week. Kejriwal’s party had also managed to notch a sizeable number of seats in the Surat civic body polls at the beginning of last year (of the 120 seats, the BJP won 93 and the AAP 27, while the Congress got zero).
The larger message here of course is that if the Congress doesn’t get its act together, then there are others who are only too eager to take up the space vacated by it. In all probability, Rahul Gandhi will formally take over as the party president once the Assembly elections are over. For him to be accepted by allies outside his own party (and even within), the Congress would have to win at least two of the five states going to the polls. Party leaders are hopeful of winning Punjab, Uttarakhand and emerging as the main Opposition in Goa.
For the Prime Minister, the challenge is not winning elections, rather it is about providing a credible governance. The threat from Covid still looms large, the economy has still not recovered from demonetisation; and whatever spending there is, has mostly been from disinvestment and borrowings. Yes, emotion rather than economy wins elections. But in a Covid-continuous world, and post the 2020 Bihar state polls, we are seeing that jobs and rising prices are slowly taking over the narrative. The first-time voter that voted so overwhelmingly for the PM in 2019 is the one without a job—and is now hurting. Will the PM be able to retain his/her trust? We have heard a lot of ambitious announcements about reskilling and job creation. 2022 would be a good year to make good on some of these promises, coming as it does at a midpoint in the PM’s second term.
Hence, 2022 is the Year of the Big Test, both for Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. Otherwise, it could end up as being the Year of the Big Churn.