Rahul Gandhi must review his political strategy by taking inputs from below

Even the best agenda of economic empowerment will not connect on the ground if the Congress party doesn't prepare at the grassroots level

The Congress party believes it has finessed its political messaging with a series of video broadcasts where Rahul Gandhi explains his views on current affairs. But a series of three-minute monologues to an imaginary audience is not enough to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The party’s agenda cannot evolve just from criticising the Prime Minister’s mis-governance and his boastful lies. Politics is not a zero-sum game where highlighting the BJP’s policy failures will necessarily mean advantage Congress.

The current videos follow Gandhi’s earlier TV interactions with former Reserve Bank of India Governor and economist Raghuram Rajan, Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee, international affairs expert Nicholas Burns and businessman Rajeev Bajaj. The first three episodes of new video series “Stand up India” were on the India-China face-off and more are likely to follow. A regular podcast by Rahul Gandhi is also proposed as a counter to the Prime Minister’s monthly radio chat-show, “Mann ki Baat”. Rahul Gandhi feels that such intensive use of social media is required to confront the fake narratives in legacy media “captured by fascist forces” whose peddling of hate and lies is “tearing India apart”.

There is little doubt that Rahul Gandhi stands tall amongst Opposition leaders for his bold and relentless criticism of Prime Minister Modi and his policies. But how correct is it to think that Rahul Gandhi is successfully connecting with youth hooked on social media? India’s youth is not homogenous. Its concerns, language and cultural idioms vary by religion, caste, rural-urban locations and class divides. Can one-message-for-all effectively address their concerns? Or is this exercise merely to re-package Rahul Gandhi before he takes over as Congress president? It is moot whether his makeover as a sombre ideologue will increase his acceptability among restless sections of Congressmen. As heir apparent he doesn’t even need to go to such lengths.

The Congress party is celebrating the massive surge in “likes” on Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter handle, from 20,000 in pre-Covid months to 60,000 and that videos attacking the Modi government on the India-China face-off, released on July 17 and 20, have crossed 15 crore views. A third video was released on July 24. They have been watched by over four crore people on Twitter, six crore on Facebook, two crore on YouTube and shared by two crore on WhatsApp (figures as of July 24). Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of India’s foreign policy elicited a long thread of nine counter-tweets from External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Despite these media successes is it possible that Rahul Gandhi may be focusing not only on a wrong political strategy but also a failed one?

In the run up to the 2019 general election, he followed the same strategy of giving an alternative political vision from every available platform. It left the nation no wiser and India’s “suffering majority” still voted for the BJP. Gandhi still appears to be mainly addressing the urban middle class as he had done then. The magnified social media presence of this vocal and privileged class is often mistaken for an ability to influence politics. And in any case, it has already rejected the Congress and hitched itself to the Modi bandwagon.

Were the party and Rahul Gandhi to analyse the BJP’s electoral success of 2019, they would see that its major gains were in the rural and socially weak sections of the population. A study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies showed that compared to 2014 the BJP’s rural vote share went up by 7.3 % in 2019 and its seats from 190 to 207. In semi-urban areas (defined as constituencies with more than 30% but less than 60% urban population) the party increased its vote share by 3.3% and its seats from 53 in 2014 to 58 in 2019. In highly urban (more than 60% urban population) constituencies the BJP’s vote share went up by nearly 2%, though the number of seats won remained at 40. Clearly, the bedrock of the BJP’s electoral dominance in 2019 was its support among the poor, where its vote went up from 24% in 2014 to 36% in 2019.

Rahul Gandhi’s current videos (the latest ones are quite wrongly, in English with Hindi subtitles) say little to these groups; his arguments could not win them over even in the charged atmosphere of electoral “war” in 2019. The party must use the time before the next general election to devise “peace-time” strategies to woo the poor, not sap its energy cultivating the urban middle class.

The party has to re-emphasise its relationship with the rural population, and the nation’s marginalised. But even the best agenda of economic empowerment will not connect on the ground if there is no preparation by party organisation at the grassroots level. Plus, a new social, political and economic agenda must develop from feedback from those actively working in the rural sector, with the poor and the unemployed. Inputs from village, block and district Congress leaders are crucial to frame a grassroots-up agenda. The party can also tap into the learning and experience of those civil society activists who have put their lives at risk working with the poor and those who are sought to be marginalised by new citizenship laws. Only with a spectrum of inputs from below can the party evolve an agenda to counter the one set by the ruling party.

Rahul Gandhi like any political leader will never have all the answers for all the woes of the Congress party. Neither will those advising him. The political strategy of the party will have to come from inputs from below -- from committed party workers, especially those who are out in the streets, as in Uttar Pradesh for example, despite the pandemic. The political messaging the party devises will have to be embedded in a broader political strategy that re-connects it with the poor and the marginalised. Everything else is a waste of its energy and resources.