Is Rahul Gandhi prepared to steer the Congress to victory in 2024?

The Congress chief has been on a appeal offensive in latest months, however which may not be sufficient to topple the BJP.

When Rahul Gandhi not too long ago launched a frontal assault in Parliament on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failure to comprise ethnic violence in Manipur—his first since his disqualification from the Lok Sabha was revoked by the Supreme Courtroom on August 4—it was unimaginable for the Bharatiya Janata Occasion or its companions in prime-time TV to dismiss it as mere fulmination coming from a languid Opposition steady.

The political battle traces, or at the least the optics of it, have swiftly modified because the formation of the 26-party INDIA alliance towards Modi. They started to redraw when the 53-year-old Wayanad MP launched into a pan-India march in September 2022, displaying ease in speaking with a cross-section of individuals and undoing a decade of unhealthy publicity that had rendered his picture as that of an aloof and entitled politician.

A renewed curiosity in Rahul Gandhi is a actuality. And satirically, the BJP has aided it. From his rushed conviction in a legal defamation swimsuit and disqualification as a Lok Sabha member, perceived broadly as politically orchestrated, to making an attempt to defame him with a “flying-kiss controversy” as quickly as he addressed the Parliament on August 9, the BJP has handed him a helpful asset in Indian politics that he hitherto lacked: victimhood.

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Additionally, in making an attempt to politically remove Rahul Gandhi, the BJP has unwittingly conveyed its worry of his model of politics, with robust speak on crony capitalism and divisive nationalism. The BJP’s recognition of him as a risk has the potential to shatter the “TINA” (there isn’t a various) consider 2024, one thing on which Modi’s invincibility as an govt has majorly relied.

“Some days again I visited Manipur. Our Prime Minister didn’t go. He nonetheless has not gone. As a result of for him, Manipur will not be part of India,” Rahul Gandhi tried to painting Modi as a standoffish politician, in a 30-minute speech through the monsoon session of Parliament. There was precision bombing on the BJP’s themes of nationwide safety and nationalism, because the Congress chief emphasised that “India is a voice. It’s the voice of our individuals, the voice from the hearts of our individuals. You have got murdered that voice. This implies you might have murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur.”

Exterior Parliament, his crew is working tirelessly to depict him as an accessible and affable, frontline opposition chief with synchronised public appearances with the much less well-heeled residents. In Madina village of Haryana’s Sonipat district, as an example, Rahul Gandhi was seen driving a tractor and rolling up his trousers as he strode into muddy fields to sow paddy saplings. He interacted with the farmers over problems with inflation and the stoop in agricultural development, and in a video story uploaded in a while his YouTube channel, he averred: “If we take heed to them (farmers), perceive their standpoint, many issues of the nation may be solved.”

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi having lunch with vegetable vendor Rameshwar in New Delhi on August 14. The underlying goal behind his interactions with the general public is undoubtedly geared toward fragmenting the present-day consolidation of the poor voters and the youthful voters behind Narendra Modi.
| Photograph Credit score:
PTI

In Delhi, he visited a bike-repairing store and lent his hand in fixing a two-wheeler. His affected person listening to a vegetable vendor, Rameshwar, on hovering tomato costs, as the 2 had lunch collectively at Gandhi’s place, went viral on social media. The underlying goal is undoubtedly geared toward fragmenting the present-day consolidation of the poor voters and the youthful voters behind Modi, which has enabled his BJP to defeat the Congress in roughly 200 Lok Sabha seats the place they’ve a head-on collision. Within the 65 seats of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, for instance, the BJP within the 2019 normal election received 61, Congress three.

What the Congress wants

However is a repaired public profile of Rahul Gandhi and the Opposition coming collectively sufficient to seize energy when the nation goes to the hustings in 2024? No. To safe a turnaround in its fortunes, the Congress wants three issues: One, a management function within the India alliance, which is presently inconceivable. Two, a gorgeous financial message that resonates with completely different sections of society. And three, assembling electorally vital social coalitions, notably in states with a fancy caste mosaic.

Whereas it’s prudent to keep away from turning the 2024 elections right into a conflict of personalities between Modi and Rahul Gandhi, a nationwide election can’t be approached as merely an mixture of state elections, with a give attention to addressing State-specific aspirations. The Congress marketing campaign has to embody a broader nationwide message and showcase nationwide management vis-a-vis necessary problems with governance, safety, and international affairs to draw various voters, who’ve come to admire a robust govt in charge of his celebration and alliance companions.

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Relating to controlling the levers of energy of the India alliance, the Congress is cleverly creating that notion by nuanced optics. First, it had the opposition events postpone their Patna assembly to June 23 to regulate to Rahul Gandhi’s schedule, who was, at the moment, travelling overseas. There was additionally deliberate drum-beating within the media following the Bangalore assembly on July 18 to underscore that it was Rahul Gandhi who named the coalition as “INDIA” or the Indian Nationwide Developmental Inclusive Alliance.

The INDIA companions have given up projecting anybody from amongst their ranks as a possible prime ministerial candidate, which works to the Congress’ benefit. This can be a departure from how issues have been earlier this 12 months when regional satraps wouldn’t miss any alternative to undermine Rahul Gandhi’s authority. In March, whereas addressing celebration members over the phone in a program that was telecast stay on a number of native information channels, Mamata Banerjee had stated, “Rahul Gandhi is Modi’s largest TRP.”

“The Congress marketing campaign has to embody a broader nationwide message and showcase nationwide management vis-a-vis necessary problems with governance, safety, and international affairs to draw various voters.”

Nonetheless, in the case of narrative-setting, Rahul Gandhi is inconsistent and, purely from an electoral standpoint, impractical. If the Congress has to use the dual problems with inflation and unemployment, it has to articulate a persuasive financial coverage linked to individuals’s egocentric pursuits. Solely mentioning Narendra Modi’s failures is not going to translate the ignition of rage towards an anaemic economic system into the political desertion of the BJP.

In Karnataka, the place the Congress did very nicely within the latest meeting elections, the celebration had focussed on financial populism, promising, amongst different issues, 200 models of free energy to each family, and that labored. However on the nationwide degree, Rahul Gandhi’s fixation on effecting an ideological turnaround within the lots makes his discourse look both obscure or too lofty. It additionally hinders different necessary issues, akin to China’s incursions into Indian land, or the aspiration for the outdated pension scheme from getting widespread discover.

Unfinished enterprise

Rahul Gandhi is but to display a substantial degree of political astuteness in making an attempt to assemble an anti-Modi social coalition. Within the Congress’s plenary held in February in Raipur, the celebration’s management pledged to give attention to mobilising voters on the backside rung of the financial ladder. However in follow, it has solely parroted OBC-centric speaking factors of regional events in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who ended Congress hegemony within the late Eighties by stitching an alliance between the intermediate castes and the minorities.

That mannequin labored for the “Mandal events” such because the Samajwadi Occasion in Uttar Pradesh and what’s now the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar as a result of their management belonged to the dominant Yadav caste, and each states had a sizeable Muslim inhabitants that rooted for them. However for a nationwide celebration just like the Congress, emulating that mannequin could be counterproductive in the remainder of the Hindi heartland the place it has neither the prepared assist of a dominant caste nor decisive Muslim votes.

A extra prudent course could be to enchantment to a variety of discontented Modi voters, even when meaning missing definition on polarising points such because the caste census and reservation. However Rahul Gandhi’s proclivity to open his coronary heart out on a regular basis is problematic. In a Karnataka rally in April, he gave the impression to be studying out the script of the Mandal events when he demanded the caste census and lifting the cap of reservation from the present 50 per cent.

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“Modi solely speaks about OBCs, however is not going to launch the info. Modi solely desires OBC votes. However Congress quickly after coming to energy will do it,” he iterated. Mockingly, when his celebration was in energy, the Socio-Financial Caste Census of 2011 completed beneath its aegis attracted criticism for its methodology, and its knowledge was by no means launched.

In any case, the OBC plank didn’t come to Akhilesh Yadav’s rescue within the Uttar Pradesh Meeting election in 2022 when the defection of highly effective OBC leaders akin to Swami Prasad Maurya, Dharam Singh Saini, and Om Prakash Rajbhar from the NDA did not crystallise right into a political rebellion towards the BJP: a staggering 65 per cent of non-Yadav OBCs voted for the BJP, in keeping with a CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey. If something, it kindled recollections of the historic incompatibility between the Dalits and the OBCs, and pushed a bit of Dalits in addition to the Brahmins, in any other case upset with Adityanath’s alleged “Thakur raj”, to stay with the BJP.

The Congress must recast itself as a viable and engaging platform for all types of disillusioned BJP voters and give attention to fragmenting the BJP’s roughly 37 per cent vote share whereas holding onto its 19.5 per cent. For that, it wants a dream to promote. “Mohabbat ki dukan” will not be that dream. It presents no elixir for individuals’s livelihood points.