Congress endgame

Plenary weakens prospects of a united front

The recently concluded 85th Congress Party plenary at Raipur flattered to deceive by signalling that Rahul Gandhi would be the face of the party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. This apart, the party resolved to adopt an electoral platform that would focus on the minimum income guarantee programme (NYAY) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged proximity to industrialist Gautam Adani, whose stock-market dealings were questioned recently by activist investor group Hindenburg. Considering that Mr Gandhi led the Congress to its worst showing in two successive Lok Sabha elections, in one of which NYAY and Mr Modi’s alleged wrongdoing in the Rafale deal were the party’s principal campaign issues, it is hard to see why the Congress is expecting a different result by doing the same thing over and over again.

Admittedly, Mr Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra has gone some way towards repairing the Congress’ tattered reputation and transforming his personal image from that of a callow political scion to a thoughtful leader engaged with the problems of India’s people. Unclear yet is the degree to which this exercise will translate into votes. The party would have done better to test the waters first in the state elections that are due ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and considered a dress rehearsal for that event. Three of these are due towards the end of this year, in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and would have offered the Congress better visibility both of its popularity and the efficacy of the strategy it is following. The signals from Raipur also repudiated the practice of electing members of the Congress Working Committee in favour of nominations by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, who can be considered a proxy for the Gandhi family, suggesting that even the much-needed organisational reforms are in abeyance.

The bigger consequence of Raipur is that it has considerably weakened the possibility of creating a strong and credible Opposition platform against the dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Raipur resolution spoke of the “urgent need to take on the National Democratic Alliance on common ideological grounds” rather than allowing myriad Opposition parties to fight individually and split the vote in the BJP’s favour. The resolution also mentioned the need to “identify, mobilise and align like-minded secular forces” towards a broad Congress-led coalition. To be sure, there is no shortage of like-minded secular forces, but these are led by towering personalities in their own right, such as Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar or Arvind Kejriwal. It is difficult to see how such seasoned politicians, with formidable electoral achievements to their name, will agree to parlay as junior partners with a politician whose political credentials are weak. Unlike 2004, when the party’s alliances gave it an edge over a relatively weak Opposition, the BJP today is a dominant party with a robust ground-level organisation and is led by a prime minister who enjoys overwhelming popularity. It is doubtful whether Mr Gandhi who wields no formal power, having stepped down as party president after the poor Lok Sabha showing in 2019, and whose ennui cost the party power in several states, can radically alter the country’s political dynamics in less than a year.