Dec 20, 2024 08:25 PM IST
This winter session of Parliament offered an opportunity to the Opposition to put the government on the mat in relation to bread-and-butter issues or national security questions. Instead, the Congress is trading charges with the BJP on individuals
Perhaps Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party could borrow a critical lesson from the world of news media.
The Congress party — faced with a slew of defeats and embarrassments in the recent assembly elections after what seemed to be a moment of repair in the Lok Sabha elections — is increasingly trapped in esoteric battles. These may do well in the party’s social media echo chambers, but don’t pull in any new voters.
This is a mistake many of us in the media have made, too. In journalism, we have had to learn the hard way that not all issues that obsess the navel-gazing circle of politicians and the reporters who cover them matter to the larger audience.
This does not mean that we should not report from conviction on things we still consider to be of public importance. But it is a warning to us to either make our storytelling more effective — so that more people care — or reflect on our editorial choices. Either way, we should be mindful of the impact (or lack thereof) of our content.
And sometimes, what powers our communication is the nuts and bolts of production — camera, lighting, and graphics, alongside how we structure and lead our teams.
Apply this now to the state of play in the Congress party. Even at the height of a pitched battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress over BR Ambedkar and a speech made by Amit Shah in Parliament — and a subsequent physical tussle — Rahul Gandhi suddenly invoked the Adani issue. His allegation was that the entire fracas over whether he had pushed a Member of Parliament (MP) — a charge made by the BJP — was to deflect from a larger debate around Adani’s relationship with the government.
I would separate any institutional issues raised by the Adani controversy — the allegations in the United States, the role of Sebi, and the intervention of the Supreme Court — from the political impact of these issues. It’s evident that in this political season, Adani is what Rafale was in 2019. Then too, the Congress raised the Rafale case at every available opportunity and got no electoral gains from it.
Rahul Gandhi’s single-point fixation on Adani is also mired in contradictions. The rest of the Opposition allies are clearly not on board. Sharad Pawar flaunts his closeness to the tycoon. Mamata Banerjee has never joined the chorus of Congress protests.
And even the Congress’ own chief ministers will not take the Adani conglomerate on. It is a matter of some irony that the Telangana chief minister was accused of proximity to the Adani group by his opponents; in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi was accusing the Modi government of the same.
Why would the Congress dilute an emotionally charged debate over Ambedkar to invoke Adani?
The party seems occupied with complex corporate issues that are alien and inaccessible to the majority of citizens. Or it seems to be pulled into polarising ideological debates. Take Priyanka Gandhi’s Palestine bag, for instance. Now, of course, she is correct in saying that she is free to wear what she pleases. But as a major Opposition leader in Parliament, she obviously carried the bag to make a political statement. Depending on your point of view, that act is either one of courageous empathy or needless naivete. And, yes, she also raised the issue of Bangladesh Hindus the same day she carried the Palestine bag. And yes, she brought a Bangladesh bag the next day and became a talking point again. But is it worth spending political capital on issues that won’t pull in a single new voter? And don’t immediately impact the lives of Indians at home?
Caught up in its own rhetoric, the real crisis of the Congress remains unaddressed — how to fix its organisational structure. And how to manage elections more efficiently. Avant-garde videos may have upped the social media game of the party, garnering hundreds of thousands of likes. But, in a first-past-the-post system, they don’t necessarily correspond to votes and can lull you into complacency.
This Parliament session has been an absolute washout. It could have been a chance for the Opposition to put the government on the mat in relation to bread-and-butter issues or national security questions. Calls from within the Opposition for Mamata Banerjee to lead and rally the different parties have also added to the perception that the Opposition is not on the same page.
Instead, the BJP and the Congress are trading charges on two individuals — George Soros and Adani. Neither has anything to do with the price of onions. Or how to do effective booth management.
The Opposition needs to tell a different story. Or tell the same one better.
Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author.The views expressed are personal
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