THE CONGRESS HAS never been so vulnerable as it is now, and it does not appear a viable option for the Congress to survive by maintaining the status quo. As the election results demonstrate, the grand old party is not only a lumbering elephant, but also a slow learner.
The BJP, on the other hand, is led by men whose single-minded focus is on electoral success. For Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the commitment to politics is 24x7. The BJP’s booth-level management and its unrelenting projection of Balakot strikes yielded rich dividends, months after its electoral reverses in the Hindi heartland.
Priyanka Gandhi, on whom Congress workers had high hopes, would by now have realised that one cannot work for a few weeks and still expect miracles to happen. Nonetheless, if she had shown grit and initiative to contest against Modi in Varanasi, the Congress could have made a wider impact.
Her withdrawing from the fray in Varanasi was a grave error of judgment. Conceding that seat without so much as a test of strength dampened the enthusiasm of Congress workers in other areas. To lose honourably to a serving prime minister would have been too small a cost to bear in the no-holds-barred national elections. The towel, however, was thrown in rather early in the day. The opportunity of a lifetime was missed; it is unlikely to repeat itself again.
The Modi wave has been so strong that it calls for a breakwater alliance of opposition parties. A definite move in this direction, sooner than later, would be good for the country. Democracies need a coherent opposition to restrain the ruling dispensation from going out of control.
The Congress and the leadership of non-BJP parties will have to shed unrealistic ambitions. A herculean task awaits them, if they are indeed ready to take on the challenge. Communal polarisation, virtually irreversible after the 2019 elections, has taken India some distance towards becoming a Hindu-rashtra. Although it is convincingly beaten now, the Congress, as the biggest opposition party in Parliament, could yet be a key facilitator in setting up the 2024 contest.
As Congress president, Sonia Gandhi provided stability at the top and a modicum of electoral renewal for the party for some years. Without a member of the Gandhi family at the helm, the Congress may fall further. To remain as a pan-India entity, it has to reinvent itself, introduce radical changes to become a robust organisation, and infuse ‘fresh blood’ at different levels.
It would need to make the most of the Nehru legacy, without downplaying the contributions of outstanding leaders like Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel, Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose.
All this is easier said than done.
In my 2018 book India: Shedding the Past, Embracing the Future, 1906-2017, I wrote that “if the Congress is further decimated (or improves its tally just marginally) in 2019, the stage would have been reached to contemplate the last rites.” One option, I suggested, was to hand over the party to a regional leader who is irrevocably opposed to the BJP. “The West Bengal chief minister—if she undertakes to effect a merger of the TMC—would be an obvious candidate,” I wrote.
Politics makes strange bedfellows; what may appear virtually impossible at present can become a practical possibility. Sonia Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee are known to share a cordial personal equation. If they agree to join forces in mutual interest, an organisationally strengthened Congress (with Sonia as president and Mamata as working president) could mount, alongside other non-BJP parties, a credible challenge to the ruling alliance.
Bhatnagar is author and former IAS officer.
