BackWhat next for the Congress?
A big concern is that the Congress's entire strategy for revival is premised on missteps by the BJP
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Crucial information influencing India’s economy and its politics will be released in the next 10 days. While one is a gift of nature, the other is a people’s verdict.
On 15 May, the India Meteorological Department will pronounce its second forecast, which, among other things, will also tell us when the monsoon will make landfall in Kerala. Initial expectations are that this year’s monsoon will be normal, breaking the jinx of two consecutive droughts that have devastated large parts of rural India. Reconfirmation would not only mean relief to farmers, it will have a salutary effect on inflationary expectations and act like a tonic for the rest of the economy—especially demand.
Four days later, the Election Commission will declare the results of assembly elections to Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. For once, since the historic 2014 general election which catapulted the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, these assembly elections will be a scrutiny of the performance of the Congress.
Not just because the Congress is the incumbent in two states, Kerala and Assam. If, as some opinion polls predict, it does lose power in Assam (to the BJP-led combine, which would be creating history in the state) and in Kerala (to the Left), it would, despite the party groupies, stoke visible restlessness within the party’s middle rung. It would also mean that the electoral footprint of the Congress would shrink to Karnataka in the south, the hill state of Himachal Pradesh and Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram in the north-east. A good showing in West Bengal, where it is in alliance with the Left (yes, its rival in Kerala) won’t hide the blemishes—since, like in Bihar, it will be turning in a performance as a minor partner in an alliance of convenience; surely for the country’s oldest national party, this can hardly be succour.
Even if the Congress proves the pollsters wrong and scrapes past the finish line, it cannot wish away the tough questions it needs to ask itself nationally with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) about to embark on its third year in office; if there is a moment to regroup for the Congress, this is its best opportunity.
The 16th general election could be viewed as an electoral surprise—it happens to the best and the Congress is no different, even though it has been at the helm for most of the past seven decades. But what is worrying is its persistent slide thereafter, losing back-to-back elections to state assemblies, including the humiliation of failing to open its account in Delhi—a state it ruled for three consecutive terms.
A bigger concern is that the party’s entire strategy for revival is premised on missteps by the BJP. Surely, the Congress can’t base its chances on what it made of the 2004 general election, where it emerged as an accidental victor after the BJP messaging of ‘Shining India’ and bad alliances backfired; unlike in 2009, when it consummately defeated the BJP.
Unfortunately, the Congress seems to have repurposed its life in the opposition to a strategy of obstructionism. And there is no method in the madness. Its opposition to the land acquisition bill could be understood as a smart political move which cost the BJP crucial time and social capital. But by opposing bills like the move to amend the Constitution to introduce the goods and services tax and legislation to give statutory recognition to Aadhaar (which eventually the BJP hustled through Parliament as a money bill, rendering infructuous the Congress-led veto in the Rajya Sabha), it is projecting itself as cussed.
It is not the same thing as what the BJP indulged in when it was in the opposition during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA); and this is regardless of what the party’s groupies in the media keep arguing. This is because UPA-2 was a government struggling with the ghosts of corruption in high office as well as facing up to the realities of jobless growth in an aspiration-driven India and a failing global economy. The NDA definitely has its flaws, but so far corruption is not one of them.
The Congress therefore desperately needs a credible and positive agenda to take on its principal rival, the BJP. A lot of this stems from the party resolving its leadership issues and also allowing middle-level leaders more room to politically assert themselves. Right now, the glass ceiling of the family-run enterprise is stifling.
The Congress’s return to winning ways is presaged on the party taking some tough decisions. It will be interesting to see whether the results of the ongoing assembly elections will prove to be just the trigger the grand old party needs to undertake the long-overdue structural reform.
Anil Padmanabhan is executive editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics.
His Twitter handle is @capitalcalculus
Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com
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