The Congress party has announced an intent to launch a “national movement” centred on its concerns about the integrity of the electoral process. “Free and fair elections is a constitutional mandate that is being called into serious question by the partisan functioning of the Election Commission. Increasing sections of society are becoming frustrated and deeply apprehensive. The Congress will take up these public concerns as a national movement,” last week’s Congress Working Committee resolution said.
The CWC meet was held in the aftermath of the party’s electoral defeat in Maharashtra, and the setback in Haryana just before that. Congress has already submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission, and, by all accounts, the movement it proposes to launch will fold in alleged malpractices ranging from the EC’s less-than-neutral conduct to tampering with electoral rolls and voter suppression.
While Congress is entitled to choose its provocations, the fact is that there is no hard evidence so far to back its claims — at best, on the EC, there are snapshots of an institutional waning. But there is another problem here and it is this: In times of BJP dominance and its Opposition’s incoherence, in a political moment when BJP seems purposeful even after a setback and Congress seems to be flailing even after a victory, the Congress’s “electoral malpractices” clamour seems too much like yet another diversion from work that lies closer home.
Here are some questions that have been waiting for the Congress’s attention, but haven’t got it so far — and going by its current preoccupations, will continue to be neglected.
Congress needs to ask, first of all, if it can keep taking recourse to arguments like “what goes up, will come down”. Because, for the most part, for the last several years, that’s what it seems to be saying. In other words, can it afford a strategy that demands little more of it than just sitting back and waiting for voters to see the light or for the BJP to trip on anti-incumbency?
In Maharashtra, it seemed that Congress relied on the real farmer distress on the ground and genuine anxieties on price rise and the pains of joblessness to do its work for it — without putting in the political labour of framing them as electoral issues, which includes reaching out and persuading the electorate of its own commitment and credibility. In too many elections, not just in Maharashtra, Congress seems to be counting, most of all, on being the inevitable receptacle of the vote when the voter turns away from the BJP. In far too many elections, Congress posturing has smacked of a complacent self-righteousness, suggesting that the only thing to be done is for the voters to see the error of their ways in choosing the BJP. And when it is not self-righteous, it is apocalyptic — painting end-of-democracy spectres if the BJP is voted back in.
Congress needs to think about why these spectres are not having the desired effect. It needs to pause and look at what the BJP is getting right, not just what it is doing wrong. This includes, importantly, the BJP’s ability to constantly construct larger wholes even as it addresses the parts separately.
While the BJP plays the caste game to the full, for instance — in Maharashtra, ahead of the campaign, its strategists were counting the 350-plus OBC sub-castes and the 50-plus sub-groups in SCs — it also invites voters into bigger and wider imagined communities. The Nation and the Civilisation that upholds it, India on the World Stage, the Hindu Samaj, the Women, the Young and Aspirational, the Labharthi or beneficiaries. Of course, exclusion is built into the BJP’s whole — the Muslim minority is seen only as a sub-group of the passive labharthi category, it is actively cast as the “Other” for the rest of the imagined communities, or pushed to their very fringe. And yet, the effect is of the BJP casting a wider net, while its opponents — especially Congress, through its demand for the caste census — are seen as harping on narrower identities.
Congress needs to find a language and political imagination to address the voters’ need to belong to evocative and emotive narratives larger than themselves — it needs to do so without being BJP Lite. The problem also is that, from Hindutva to cash transfers, Congress tries to fight the BJP by doing a BJP.
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Congress also needs to grapple with blank spaces in its Leader’s CV. Through his two yatras, north to south and east to west, and by consistently raising issues from unemployment and cronyism to inequality, Rahul Gandhi has successfully shaken off the “Pappu” tag that BJP propaganda had foisted on him. But he still has a considerable distance to cover to win the people’s confidence in his abilities to deliver — for the simple reason that he has not so far taken on that responsibility. In the tenure of the Manmohan Singh government, he missed an opportunity to establish his credentials as an administrator and policymaker. He and his party need to think of how to blunt the edge of that criticism against him.
With Priyanka Gandhi entering Parliament via Wayanad, Congress’s First Family will now have three MPs. This only sharpens the Congress’s challenge of projecting itself as a vehicle for the young and ambitious who are impatient with the hurdles posed by the entitled and the privileged. This, when the BJP continues to make pulling chief ministers out of a hat its USP — every time it fast-tracks a Mohan Yadav in MP, or a Devendra Fadnavis earlier in Maharashtra, it reiterates the absolute power of its high command, but it also sends out a message to its anonymous middle rung that it is possible to rise in the party. In doing so, it underlines a contrast with a Congress in the grip of family.
These and many other questions and issues call for Congress agitation. While the free-ness and fair-ness of polls is fundamental for a democracy, it would be unfortunate if it becomes a mere stand-in or a red herring.
Till next week,
Vandita
