Opinion by Editorial
With rifts around Delhi polls, a question for INDIA: Should it even exist?
The central problem with the INDIA bloc is that the party at its centre is weak and pretends not to know it. Congress, the largest member of the alliance, does not command the respect of its regional allies because its hauteur is not matched by its performance.
Jan 11, 2025 07:04 IST First published on: Jan 11, 2025 at 07:04 IST
The crumbling of the INDIA bloc is unsurprising and, in all likelihood, it will go unlamented with Delhi’s electoral wind. After all, even when it was being put together in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election, it seemed to be a last-minute patchwork of short-term calculations and compulsions, egos and ambitions, against the dominant BJP, lacking a stitched-together story or theme. The LS results in June 2024 — with the alliance getting 234, restricting the BJP to 240, and Congress nearly doubling its own tally to 99 — gave it an appearance of coherence. But that impression proved to be shortlived. It was dispelled all too soon following the setbacks to INDIA constituents in Haryana and Maharashtra and the BJP’s victories. Now, as the Delhi election approaches, as Congress takes on the AAP which is fighting off the challenge from the BJP, and the TMC and SP throw their (symbolic) weight behind the AAP, the Opposition alliance faces an existential question that has been raised both within it and outside: What remains of it, and should it even continue to exist?
The central problem with the INDIA bloc is that the party at its centre is weak and pretends not to know it. Congress, the largest member of the alliance, does not command the respect of its regional allies because its hauteur is not matched by its performance. It did well in the Lok Sabha polls but that was in comparison to its own unchecked waning, and by all accounts, its regional partners in different states contributed to its tally. In Delhi, where it once ruled for a straight three terms, in the last two elections, both assembly and parliamentary, Congress did not win a single seat, and its vote share has been in steep decline, dipping from 40.31 per cent in 2008 to 4.26 per cent in 2020. It does not take much political acumen to see why the AAP, which has weaned away most of the Congress vote in Delhi, would not want to cede any ground to it, especially after Congress refused to give it any quarter in the Haryana assembly poll most recently. If in Delhi it is the AAP which is the face of the fight against the BJP, in Bihar, the only other assembly election this year, it will be the RJD. In both elections, Congress is barely in the reckoning.
In the absence of a larger conviction or binding commitment, the INDIA alliance may not withstand the strains of a hardheaded politics. Even if it dies, however, the space that it occupies will arguably continue to exist. The BJP’s dominance has received a dent or two but it is undoubtedly the primary pole of the polity, which shapes and structures the political terrain and contest. A national alternative to it remains a democratic imperative. But for it to be enduring and persuasive, it will need its main pole, the Congress, to be bigger and stronger. Or more generous and humble if it has to get anti-BJP parties to come together and pool their strengths, not on the basis of short-term convenience, but to tell a thought-through and shared story. That, from the evidence so far, is hardly evident.
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