Cong paid for overconfidence; Needs to introspect

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA

Having observed Punjab closely during the run-up to the assembly polls, I get the feeling that here Congress developed a suicidal tendency of taking the voters for granted. Even before the poll schedule was announced and throughout the campaign, Congress leaders thought that the party was on its way to the corridors of power in Chandigarh and no power on earth could stop its victory march. But the voters clearly had different ideas and they indeed had the last laugh.

The Congress theory of “last time they, this time we”, citing the elections post 1966, went for a toss as the Akali Dal-BJP scripted what had never happened in 46 years. An over confident Congress kept on banking on the “unscientific theory” that an incumbent government in Punjab will be thrown out come what may.

But Congress could have looked beyond Punjab to find that the theory of incumbent government being voted out has lost its meaning and relevance. Haryana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Orissa, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat are recent examples. The list is only growing. Voters like to be respected. You have to go to them with all humility. They don’t like political parties taking them for granted and flexing muscles.

Readers may recall the aggressive body language of Congress scion Rahul Gandhi in Uttar Pradesh. He was continuously folding the sleeves of his arms, an aggressive gesture. In Bollywood films, actors do that when they enter into a fight with a villain or some other character. This was in sharp contrast to the humility of chief minister designate Akhilesh Yadav, who was throughout humble, never rolled his sleeves, never tore papers on stage, considered voters as the king and did not take them for granted. The results are there for all to see.

Punjab’s Captain Amarinder Singh too was threatening the rivals continuously using words like Qatal-e-aam and telling the voters what he would do post March 6 when the results are out. On the other hand, the voters saw chief minister Parkash Singh Badal in a new humble avtaar, asking votes in the name of development and unfinished agenda of the state government. Now both Rahul and Cap Amarinder, declared the chief ministerial candidate by Rahul himself, will have to introspect what went wrong and whether they need to change their style to win back the voters.

Congress will have to realise that Indian polity is gradually getting regional and it will have to meet regional aspirations like never before to continue being relevant. Party tickets in Congress were decided in New Delhi with Cabinet Minister C P Joshi from Rajasthan being the chairman of the panel which decided the tickets. It may have brought in an element of neutrality in selection but just for the sake of it. I wonder, how would Joshi know the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and the geographical peculiarities of the state, whose language is entirely different from that of Rajasthan.

On the other hand, candidate selection in Akali Dal was decentralised and choice was made in Chandigarh and various cities of the state. Sukhbir Badal knew the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, peculiarities of each area, anger of electorate against some sitting legislators and took the decision on candidates accordingly – changing some, shifting the constituencies of others etc.

I wonder how could the Congress not see the disaster coming. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, son of the soil and the first Sikh Prime Minister of the country, addressed an election rally in Amritsar, he was facing empty chairs. The party had to rope in Gurdas Mann to keep the motley crowd interested. That should have been the warning signal. The reason is simple. Congress never sold Manmohan Singh as the USP of the party to the electorate. The voters in Punjab felt he was only a mascot and nothing else.

After the resounding defeat, Congress has now analysed the reasons of defeat at the macro level for consumption of party high command. It refers to the role of party rebels, anti-incumbency votes going to Sanjha Morcha and PPP, BSP slicing the Congress vote base of dalits, SAD-BJP appropriating the atta-dal scheme etc.

The analysis, as expected, does not give any credit to the SAD-BJP, its development oriented campaign, anti-incumbency against almost 8 years rule of the central government, micro management at the lowest level, big ticket corruption which rocked the UPA, indecisiveness and policy paralysis of the centre.

It also does not refer to need of decentralization, bringing in a new set of local leaders, reducing the dependence on high command, changing campaign style, touching the hearts of the voters, futility of taking voters for granted, factionalism in state leadership and the failure of the leadership to show what they seriously intended to do for the voters after being elected.

The entire campaign of Congress was negative. Instead of showing the way forward, it merely concentrated on criticism of the SAD-BJP government without giving an alternative. To some extent Congress campaign in Punjab suffered the same fate as in UP. Rahul Gandhi, in his meetings merely criticised the 22 years of non-Congress rule in UP but failed to show the way forward and what the party intended to do if voted to power. There was no positive agenda in UP like that in Punjab. Now, if Rahul campaigns in UP in 2017 and talks about 27 years of misrule of non-Congress rule, I wonder if there would be any takers.

Despite the shortcomings, Congress in Punjab did not do as badly as the difference of 26 seats suggests. The vote difference between SAD-BJP and Congress was less than 2 per cent. This shows that the vote bank of the party is not on a downward spiral but more or less intact. The problem was that it could not get the votes of the youth, the anti-incumbency votes or what is loosely called as floating or non committed votes. It is here that the party has to go the extra mile and it clearly failed in that. (March 11, 2012)

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