If the Bharath Jodo Yatra brought fresh hopes to the Congress, the elections to the post of President proved something of a dampener. The election should have dovetailed the Yatra and built on the public goodwill it has generated.
As it turned out, the two candidates were a study-in-contrast. Malikarjune Kharge as the party’s elder, had the old guard rallying around him, citing his exhaustive knowledge of party affairs. Sashi Tharoor projected himself as the candidate for transition and offered rhetoric in abundance. But rhetoric is not proxy for a futuristic agenda in a party knee deep in the doldrums.
The Congress sorely needed brave choices from outside-the-box, and drawn from a bold ideological outlook. Kharge and Tharoor did not display urgency of the nation’s existential political circumstances. Simply put, an 80-year old stalwart and an intellectual disconnected from the masses were not the route to rebuild the sinking grand old party. The party desperately needed a social vision rooted in radical change; someone with the courage of a VP Singh of the Mandal Commission variety.
The election is now done and dusted and a new future is now meant to unfold. Kharge quite patently looks like a man in the shadows of the Gandhi’s. Why didn’t the Congress choose a Gandhi rather than make a big deal about the first non-Gandhi in over 20 plus years to win a party election. Kharge might have one asset. He is a Dalit and that is an important social category for leadership to be drawn from. But not exclusively- The larger question will always be: What track record did either have in organizing masses of the Bahujans, and marginalized workers, women, landless peasants, and the urban poor for justice?
Tharoor may write eloquently on these matters but possesses no significant mass-based political practices on these subjects. He largely confined himself to organizational matters rather than social justice questions. Both failed to present an agenda for renewal which would challenge the BJP and its divisive agenda of hate and religious bigotry. The BJP will naturally celebrate the election and its outcome. They are now further entrenched in power not because it has credentials of success but because the opposition is a forlorn political entity which offers no change in the political horizon.
A Congress all on its own is a political non-factor. It must humble itself to start accepting as true that it has lost its allure. It can only add influence and substance through coalition building that includes smaller, regional parties, and other social-secular platforms that have the people on their side. The Congress has long lost its social plot. It has lost more elections than it has won, and has surrendered far more seats than it once had. Congress citadels have turned into a confused space which opposition parties have invaded and taken over. The Congress defector is a daily commodity in the political marketplace around the country.
The public sensed new hope in the Bharath Jodo Yatra and the mass mobilization. This needs to be converted into political capital with no delay. A renewed Congress agenda must emerge from conversations during the Yatra that compels hard thinking which discards faded Congress traditions. Nehruvian thoughts may easily among the best things that the country historically gained regardless of whether the BJP asks in arrogance and spite what happened in the 66 years before the BJP arrived. The fact is you can easily count the beneficiaries and successes of BJP rule on your ten fingers. There is microscopic impact in real terms. You may not hear narratives of corruption because the famously corrupt are all tucked away in foreign lands safe from prosecution and public disgrace.
With the BJP on the downslide, there is the prospect and occasion for the Congress to create a political consensus by narrowing ideological lines and creating proximity to regional causes and constituencies. Only then can the Congress hope to overwhelm the BJP hegemony being imposed on the nation. The BJP has acquired notoriety for a social agenda that has spouted hate and suppression of the masses. Even at the level of External Affairs, the Minister has become something of a political cynic who finds vast elation in make-believe that we are a global moral backbone. The real truth is that foreign policy today is about abandoned principles. The BJP’s many economic gaffes are underlined by the failure to create smart, sustainable, and distributive economic paradigms. You could almost say that the talent-pool of the BJP cabinet is an empty cupboard and you have an assertive Prime Minister who calls every shot. Convictions among even the supposedly intellectual.
BJP cadres are skin deep. One of them was seen on social media pouring cold water over a globe as his stratagem to end global warming! These are gravely perturbing signs. ‘Congress- Mukth Bharath’ smacks more of BJP’s failure-complex than an assertive political strategy.
There are lessons for Goa. The Opposition may seem in tatters in Goa with the infamous defections Goa’s eight most despised Goan politicos. The remaining seven in the opposition have substance and are no pushovers. If they remain steadfast to serve the people by blockading the government’s absurd plans and grave levels of waste, haste, and corruption, they could create a mass movement from all sections of people to lay the foundations for a democratic transition.
Each party will have to sink its political ego and unite around shared principles and ideology. This is no idle wish; it is an imperative. There is need to unite under a new leader drawn from outside the fold of the Congress and launch mass mobilization through Yatras, campaigns, and issue-based interventions. With a public decidedly disenchanted with the visible failures of a vision-devoid government, it may just be possible to initiate a game-changer and shake-up the political edifice of the BJP in 2027.
