Fifth Columnist: Nowhere to go

Barely half-an-hour into the counting of votes in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, it became clear that it was not going to be a repeat of the Bihar assembly elections of 2015.

Apart from the fact that the regional satraps, the SP and BSP, had been comprehensively vanquished, the news about India’s oldest political party, the Congress, was cataclysmic.

By the time the day died out, the Congress had slunk from 28 seats held in the outgoing UP assembly to a measly seven.

The colossal loss in UP – once the homestead of the Congress vice-president and Rahul Gandhi’s ancestors - is going to prove to be a cruel blow for the party.

After nearly two dozen election losses since he began campaigning for the Congress, and under tremendous pressure to show results, Rahul had tied up with the young SP leader, Akhilesh Yadav. This is an alliance that Samajwadi loyalists of all hues have traditionally opposed. The fact that the alliance came to grief is a manifestation of the impossibility of the Congress and Socialists to work together. For a Congress, short on morale and presumably funds, being out of power in a state for 28 years, proved to be a bridge too far.

Rahul, always a reluctant suitor, was mobilised by their consultant Prashant Kishor to travel to eastern UP and converse with farmers in a series of “khat sabhas”. They were partially successful, but lost crowds and relevance when the army conducted surgical strikes across the border into Pakistan.

Some conspiracy theorists – of the Congress variety - are of the view that the timing of the surgical strike was to steal the thunder of Priyanka Gandhi who was on the threshold of making the much awaited plunge into the hurly-burly of national politics. Now, from the benefit of hindsight, it does seem like a pipedream.

On November 8, Modi announced demonetisation of high-value currency notes. Demonetisation, it now appears, had hit the Congress heir apparent, the hardest. Financial distress compelled the party to look for an ally to contest the polls and jettison the plan to fight alone.

The charitable view in the party is that the caucus that surrounds the Congress president prevailed upon Rahul.

Interestingly, insiders in the party also admit that some of them do their bit to stoke the BJP propaganda about Rahul being an incompetent leader.

Many of these Congressmen also happily suggest, much to Rahul’s reported discomfort, that his sister Priyanka would be a better bet than him.

Informed sources claim that Rahul had responded to this suggestion with incredulity. He is believed to have asserted that all his political work would go down the drain if Priyanka was pitch forked into the campaign.

There was strong logic to his argument, but the harsh reality is that he had lost trust and confidence of many people in his party.

In UP, Priyanka did step in to negotiate a deal with Akhilesh to fight the elections together after he had split with his father and his uncle. This was seen as a wise move, as the SP had been able to remove the taint of criminality after this ‘supposed’ purge.

Quite apparently, it was not enough.

The Congress candidates performed abysmally. To many it seemed as if the alliance got hobbled precisely because of them.

A setback in the UP assembly polls is a major worry for a party that hopes to return to power at the centre in 2019.

Without a strategy to wrest the country’s most populous state, the Congress would not have a chance in hell to come close to a winning number.

What should chasten the party and its leadership further is that the option of allying with other like-minded secular parties does not seem to pay any dividends against a marauding BJP.

Congressmen are worried that from now until 2019, it’s unlikely that their circumstances will change at all. Their leader, who is still cramped by the presence of his mother and party president, Sonia Gandhi, simply cannot reinvent himself in two years.

During the election campaign in UP, Rahul appeared like a junior partner to Akhilesh, who was more assertive and displayed better command over the language. Though the Congress did well in Punjab, Manipur and Goa, it failed miserably in Uttarakhand.

The party’s misery was compounded by the fact that it did not display good reflexes to cobble together a coalition to form governments in Goa and Manipur.

The Congress footprint is now confined to Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka- states where elections will take place by 2018. Many Congressmen have been demanding a “surgery” in the party to rejuvenate its fortunes.

A senior Congress leader has said that the rings that surround the planet Saturn need to be obliterated- hinting at the sycophantic caucus that surrounds the party leadership. With Sonia’s health reportedly deteriorating further, there is a major crisis staring at the party.

Although Rahul Gandhi’s succession is not in doubt, there is grave anxiety within the party about his competence and his ability to connect with the party men. And then there is his tendency to disappear when most needed.

Since the 2014 electoral debacle, there has been no AICC session and no serious introspection about what went really went wrong. The point is whether the grand old party has reached the end of the road.

ranjitbhushan@mydigitalfc.com