6 august 2018 http://www.openthemagazine.com 27
between the party’s need to woo Muslims without being seen
as inclined towards any particular community. Worse, aside
from its perplexity over secularism, the Congress—which under
Rajiv Gandhi had lost power on account of the Bofors scandal—
has not been able to hurt the current Government’s image of
probity. Nor has it been able to shake off the miasma of corrup-
tion during the party’s two terms in power, especially with senior
party leaders such as former Finance Minister P Chidambaram
now under a cloud for it.
Modi faces no such dilemma. In spite of the hate-Modi intel-
lectual industry, the Prime Minister can rely on his ideological
moorings and undiminished personal appeal. Since 2014, the
BJP has widened its electoral base significantly. This is a powerful
social coalition of classes and castes that the Congress is frantic to
outdo with the help of regional forces such as the RJD and SP in
Bihar and UP, respectively. Such alliances may not work out the
way the party expects. The Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee
has signalled that the Congress is unwelcome in the anti-BJP front
she has mooted unless it settles for less and relents on its assump-
tion of leading such a formation. The SP too has maintained that
a continued association with the Congress may not favour its
prospects in UP. More recently, the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav has ques-
tioned Rahul’s claim to prime ministership even if the Congress
were to emerge as the biggest party in a coalition that defeats the
BJP and its allies in 2019. These rumbles among regional satraps
do not bode well for Rahul Gandhi’s party.
The cheers that Rahul’s histrionics received in Parliament can-
not disguise Congress’ shortcomings. The Congress has neither
the geographical spread nor the leadership appeal of the ruling
party to pose a serious challenge at the hustings. In terms of per-
sonal charisma and political stature, Modi scores easily. Apart
from its coalition experiment in Karnataka, the Congress has
governments only in Punjab and tiny Mizoram, while the BJP
has gained power across the country, even in parts of the North-
east where it had little presence till recently. The BJP partnership
with the PDP in Jammu & Kashmir may have come apart, but the
ruling party’s trend of the past four years has been one of rapid
expansion. The best that can be said of the Congress is that Rahul
Gandhi’s address at the CWC showed an awareness of how much
work the party needs to do before it can take on the BJP.
t
O HIS DISADVANTAGE, Rahul Gandhi is bogged
down by his dynastic image, which in today’s India
is anathema to its aspirational youth. Aside from a
strategy that seems over-reliant on attacking Modi
and his agenda, the Congress chief has failed to come up with a
vision that would be in sync with an India of the 21st century.
With the country’s youth dominating electoral outcomes and
millennials forming a key block of voters in the upcoming
General Election, the leader of India’s main opposition party has
yet to carry out a makeover that could give it an appeal among
them. He refuses to engage with the future. The eternally young
leader has nothing new to offer the young.
Set against such a leader is Modi, who has turned his biogra-
phy—of poverty and struggle and dreams—into poetics on the
stump. It works. He is still one of them.
Modi shapes perceptions. The demonetisation of high-value
currency in late 2016 could easily have been highly unpopular
as a move, but the Prime Minister successfully convinced a large
cross-section of the country that his motive was both honest and
urgent. It needed to be done to tackle black money and cleanse
the country of financial malpractices. Despite the hardships
that people faced, the country did not see mass unrest against
notebandi, as it was popularly called. His personal integrity was
never questioned.
Modi’s detractors do not give him credit for his inclusive
welfare measures. The list of schemes anchored by the Govern-
ment include Mudra, Ujjwala and Swachh Bharat. Their success
is likely to stand Modi and his party in good stead in 2019.
That may not be all that the BJP is banking on. Modi is a per-
manent campaigner. His magic on the stump has not waned in
state election after election. His speeches are likely to get sharper
and more acerbic vis-à-vis the opposition as the General Election
nears. In a speech in West Bengal, he had declared that the state’s
Durga Puja celebrations were in danger thanks to the ‘appease-
ment politics’ of the Trinamool government, and Chief Minister
Banerjee found herself on the defensive. He is one speaker who
taps the mass mind with ease.
The Prime Minister keeps a sharp eye on each state. Party lead-
ers in Maharashtra have been asked to fight the polls alone, with-
out the help of its old ally Shiv Sena. In Bihar, leaders are expected
to rejuvenate ties with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U). In Rajasthan, Chief
Minister Vasundhara Raje has been named as the BJP’s candidate
for that post in the impending state elections.
The Prime Minister has already put both his Government
and party in campaign gear, beginning with the regime’s fourth
anniversary celebrations in May. His ministers have made one
round of visits to all states in preparation for the big battle ahead.
The announcement of a major hike in Minimum Support Prices
for agricultural produce marked the start of an all-India cam-
paign that will feature as many as 50 rallies over the next five
months. Also planned are teleconference interactions between
the Prime Minister and beneficiaries of various Central schemes,
for which a database of 220 million voters has been created
by the BJP. Party President Amit Shah has completed his first
round of stocktaking visits to all states. The broad exercise has
four components, which include interactions with Lok Sabha
members, social media teams, the sorting out of glitches, and
the deployment of the party’s ‘Vistarak’ force. How earnestly
the last of these efforts is being mounted is clear in the rapid
enrolment of Vistaraks that’s underway. The party aims to have
450,000 of these full-time volunteers drawing in votes for the
BJP at the booth level.
It looks like Rahul’s performance in and outside Parliament
has only made him Modi’s biggest asset in 2019. Candidate
Rahul without an alternative vision for India has made himself
an election issue. n