Editor’s Be aware: The rot runs deep within the Congress
Can the get together reclaim its democratic house by shedding its white elephants and rogue commanders?
One cause for the demise of the as soon as invincible Mughal military was the mansabdar or military commander, the middleman between soldier and emperor. Because the centre weakened, every mansabdar slowly transformed the troops below his cost into a private fief, extra focused on his personal quick enrichment than in successful battles for the king. That the Congress get together acquired round 40 per cent votes in three States however nonetheless misplaced every may be largely attributed to the conceitedness, myopia, and hubris of its regional nabobs.
The phrase hubris is related to energy and to have to make use of it within the context of a celebration that has now been out of the Centre for a decade and guidelines in simply three States exhibits how deep the rot runs within the Congress. Its weak central management was unable to rein within the satraps, who not solely scorned the marketing campaign methods that gained the get together Karnataka simply months in the past but in addition elbowed out native alliances, launched petty intra-party feuds, and at last bit the mud. It was additionally pitiful to see a celebration that mouths platitudes about secularism permit a tainted Kamal Nath to entrance Madhya Pradesh and its State items to fall again on mushy Hindutva, each of which could not essentially have borne an electoral value, however which make its total message credibility that of a jellybean. The Congress can in poor health afford to underestimate voter resistance to a celebration providing nothing greater than recycled bromides.
In that sense it’s simpler for the Congress in Telangana (and Karnataka), the place voters are extra able to reject blatantly divisive, regressive, and communal politics. These States are lengthy beneficiaries of governments that focus extra on administration and fewer on sectarian politics, as evidenced from their financial and growth indices. Within the cow-belt States, the place Hindutva will get a extra visceral response, the BJP has stored up the communal messaging, whether or not fielding 4 Hindu seers in Rajasthan, together with one Balak Nath who known as the “Yogi of Rajasthan”, or mounting sturdy anti-conversion campaigns within the tribal belts of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The loss in Madhya Pradesh is probably essentially the most disconcerting for the Congress, given there was little doubt, even within the ranks of the BJP, concerning the sentiment towards Shivraj Singh Chouhan. That the Congress couldn’t capitalise on this does it little credit score. That is the place its organisational slips start to point out. Not like the BJP, which confirmed no hesitation in sidelining Chouhan (and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan) the Congress finds it exhausting to do away with useless weights.
If, nevertheless, regardless of this and regardless of a pliant Enforcement Directorate and Election Fee and a servile media, the BJP couldn’t forestall the Congress from retaining its vote share within the three States, there may be clearly one thing else at work. Sensing this, the BJP shortly realised that Hindutva and Modi, whereas formidable, wouldn’t be sufficient, and it shamelessly adopted the much-reviled social welfare schemes that Narendra Modi as soon as mocked as revadi.
It is a signal of vulnerability, and makes the get together as ideologically suspect as its opponent. It’s on this messy compromise, unavoidable within the nice cocktail that’s India, that one sees a vein opening up that an assiduous opposition might mine. To take action, the Congress has to first rid itself of its white elephants and rogue commanders. It additionally wants a severe dedication to self-critique its compromised previous and a deeper starvation to reclaim the challenged democratic house. If it will probably reset, because it has proven tiny indicators of doing, it needn’t be dismissed as a pushover in 2024 simply but.
