VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
The poll bugle has been sounded
and countdown to the big festival of democracy has begun. First it would be a
semi-final in December before the big game changer final in April-May next
year.
Five States would go to polls
beginning next month and December 8 would see new Governments in Rajasthan, Delhi ,
Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. More than that December 8 would prove
to be a watershed in Indian politics and likely to give a clear indication as
to which way the political wind is blowing and who will assume power in Delhi
in May next year.
There are 630 Assembly seats in
the five States which go to polls and the sample size of voters would be over
11.5 crore in these States. Clearly, the results would show how the two parties
— the BJP and the Congress are placed in the Hindi heartland and who would rule
from Delhi in May 2014. If we leave
out Mizoram, which may not have a national impact, together these four States
send 72 members to Lok Sabha. In 2009, the Congress had a distinct edge,
getting 41 members elected from these States while the BJP had to be content
with only 29 seats. Percentage wise, the size of Congress victory and its
margin over BJP in these four States was more or less similar to the one it had
at the national-level where it formed the Government. If the BJP manages to
reverse this trend this time round, first in Assembly polls and later Lok Sabha
polls, obviously sun would shine much brighter on it.
Though there was speculation in
political circles that Lok Sabha elections could be advanced to be held along
with Assembly elections, it seems the Manmohan Singh-led UPA Government and
Congress have other ideas and now it would be held as per schedule.
Elections may be six months away
but the goalpost is changing at a much rapid pace stunning the political
parties. The issues are changing so rapidly that in the fast changing political
environment, parties are redrawing their strategy every now and then.
The Congress was badly bruised
when party vice-president Rahul Gandhi rebuked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and his Cabinet on the Ordinance on convicted legislators. Soon after,
announcement of Telangana triggered a storm in united Andhra Pradesh with every
party opposed to the bifurcation of the State except the TRS in the Telangana
region and Congress High Command in New Delhi .
Will Rahul intervene again and rebuke the Prime Minister and his Cabinet again
for the Telangana announcement? Or was he kept on board when the decision was
taken? No one for sure knows the opinion of Gandhi and unless he barges in a
Press conference of one of his party’s leaders, no would know it.
But whatever the opinion of Rahul
on Telangana, what is sure is that the Congress will lose badly in Andhra
Pradesh and could be decimated in the Seema-Andhra region though it might get a
couple of seats in Telangana. Remember, this was the State, which catapulted
the Congress to power in a big way in 2009 by sending 33 members to the Lok
Sabha. Even the Congress sympathisers now say that the way Telangana issue was
handled the figure could now be anything between 0-2 in the 2014 polls.
If the handling of Telangana left
a lot to be desired so did the Ordinance on convicted leaders. As the battle of
2014 is a game of winning more and more allies in UPA and NDA, the Congress
seems to have lost its edge after the fiasco on the Ordinance. Though, Rahul’s
intervention would help cleanse politics, old allies are now wary of the party
and most of its allies feel that the Congress does not need them anymore.
Former Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav would vouch for the fact that the
Congress would not even think twice before dumping a long-term ally. Potential
allies would see the fate of jailed Lalu Prasad and the fiasco of the Ordinance
and simply decide not to do business with the Congress.
The fate of DMK leaders too is
fresh in the memory of potential Congress allies. Former Telecom Minister A
Raja spent over a year in jail in the spectrum allocation scam and even party
supremo M Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi had to spend a long-term in Tihar
Jail. A leader of RJD said that the Congress picks and chooses whom to send to
jail and whom to protect. “Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati were protected by
the same CBI which sent Raja, Kanimozhi and Lalu to jail. You can never bank on
the Congress for support in need,” said the senior RJD leader.
A section of the RJD believes
that the Congress under Rahul Gandhi would force the party to sympathetically
consider the BJP as a “friendlier” party and the Congress as “hostile”. Though,
the core vote bank of the RJD is Yadav-Muslim combine, if forced to a corner,
it may approach the BJP if Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) goes for an alliance with the
Congress. The BJP would have nothing to do with the RJD, the very thought in a
section of the RJD of a patch-up with its old enemy suggests the changing
equations and how possibilities open up in politics.
The Congress may have suffered in
terms of alliances but there is a silver lining in the biggest State of Uttar
Pradesh , which sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. There
are indications that the party could have a pre-poll alliance with the Bahujan
Samaj Party. If that happens and the trend of 2009 continues in the backdrop of
declining popularity of the Samajwadi Party, there could be some major gains
for the Congress.
In Bihar ,
Congress-JD(U) alliance, if indeed it materialises, would again help the party
get respectable numbers. But beyond these two distinct possibilities, the
Congress has nothing in terms of alliances. All its allies consider it
unreliable and have deserted it. The DMK and the Trinamool Congress, its
biggest allies in 2009, are no longer there in 2014.
But what perhaps could be the
greatest handicap of the party in the 5-6 months in the run up to the 2014
polls, is the lack of one big idea which could catapult it to power for the
third time in a row. I talked to a few
Congress leaders about any big idea with which it would go into the polls in
2014 and I could only hear about various laws on “Right”. These were Right to
Food, Right to Education, right to get cash in bank accounts etc. When I pose
the same question to the people with whom I interact, they too consider these
as their “Right” but do not associate Congress with it.
Poor people are no longer
satisfied with food or obsessed how and from where their next meal would come
from. That is a matter of right. Now they want education for their children,
health for their elders and employment for the youth. They now have aspirations
and are no longer content with 100 days of employment under MGNREGA. They want
the luxuries of modern life-FM radio sets, colour TV, decent clothes, economic
avenues and trickling down of benefits of modernisation. It is here where the
Congress has failed them. The party has no big idea on economics and growth. It
was time the party came out with a magic wand in the remaining tenure otherwise
the writing is there on the wall. (October 7, 2013)
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