In Punjab, Congress took voters for granted

The party’s attitude was all wrong: It ran an aggressive and negative campaign, little realising that this only alienated the masses, says Amitabh Shukla

The loss of Punjab is one embarrassment which the Congress is not going to forget in a hurry, at least for the next five years. The party’s defeat at the hands of the Akali Dal-BJP combine has contributed to the scripting of history — an incumbent Government has been voted back to power for the first time in 46 years.

After the embarrassment of defeat, party managers are ascribing different factors and reasons but clearly the Congress in Punjab developed a suicidal tendency of taking the voters for granted. Even before the poll schedule was announced and throughout the campaign, Congress leaders were so over-confident that their attitude bordered on arrogance. They 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 had different ideas and they indeed had the last laugh.

The Congress’s theory of “last time they, this time we”, citing elections post-1966, went for a toss as the Akali Dal-BJP combine 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.

The Congress failed to look beyond Punjab to find that the theory of incumbent Governments being voted out had lost its meaning and relevance. Neighbours Haryana and Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha, 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 — after all, you are seeking votes from them. They don’t like political parties taking them for granted.

Scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the party’s chief campaigner and strategist for the failed ‘Mission Uttar Pradesh’, Mr Rahul Gandhi, too took the voters for granted by unleashing an aggressive campaign. He was continuously seen folding the sleeves of his kurta, an aggressive gesture. In Bollywood films, the hero does that when he enters into a fight with the villain or some other vile character. You do not do this when you are out with a begging bowl before the voters. This was in sharp contrast to the humility of Mr Akhilesh Yadav, who was visibly 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 phrases like qatal-e-aam and telling the voters what he would do after March 6, when the results are out. On the other hand, the voters saw Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in a new humble avatar, seeking votes in the name of development and the unfinished agenda of his Government. Now both Mr Gandhi and Capt Singh, declared the Chief Ministerial candidate by the former himself, will have to introspect on what went wrong and whether they need to change their style to win back the voters.

The Congress will have to realise that the Indian polity is gradually getting regional and it will have to meet regional aspirations like never before to remain relevant. Party tickets in the Congress were decided in New Delhi with Cabinet Minister CP Joshi from Rajasthan as chairman of the panel which decided who got the tickets. It may have brought in an element of neutrality in the selection process but just for the sake of it. A million-dollar question is how would Mr 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, the selection of candidates by the Akali Dal was decentralised and the choice was made in Chandigarh and various cities of the State. Mr Sukhbir Badal knew the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, peculiarities of each area, the anger of the electorate against some sitting legislators and decided accordingly — changing some, shifting the constituencies of others, etc.

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, one of the best entertainers in the State, to hold back the motley crowd. That should have served as a warning signal. The reason is simple. The Congress has never projected Mr Manmohan Singh as the USP of the party to the electorate ever since he became the Prime Minister almost eight years ago. The voters in Punjab feel he is only a ‘mascot’ and nothing else with no powers to do anything for the State.

After its resounding defeat, the Congress has now analysed the reasons at the macro level for the consumption of the 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 ata-dal scheme etc.

The analysis, as expected, does not give any credit to the SAD-BJP, its development oriented campaign, anti-incumbency against almost eight years rule’ of the UPA 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 decentralisation, bringing in a new set of local leaders, reducing the dependence on the high command, changing the campaign style, touching the hearts of the voters, the futility of taking voters for granted, factionalism in the State leadership and the failure of the leadership to demonstrate its commitment to good governance the voters.

The entire campaign of the 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 the Congress campaign in Punjab suffered the same fate as in Uttar Pradesh. Mr Rahul Gandhi, in his meetings merely criticised the 22 years of non-Congress rule in Uttar Pradesh but failed to show the way forward and what the party intended to do if voted to power. There was no positive agenda in Uttar Pradesh as also in Punjab. It remains to be seen if Mr Gandhi learns his lessons and campaigns in a different manner in the 2017 Assembly polls. He cannot talk of 27 years of misrule of non-Congress Governments in the State five years from now. He will have to identify the factors that kept voters away from the Congress in this round of elections.

Despite the shortcomings, the Congress in Punjab did not do as badly as the difference of 26 seats suggests. The difference between the vote share of the SAD-BJP combine and that of the Congress is less than two per cent. This shows that the vote-bank of the party is not on a downward spiral but more or less intact. It could not get the votes of the youth, the anti-incumbency votes or what is called the floating votes. It is here that the Congress has to go the extra mile. It clearly failed to do so this time. (March 15, 2012)

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