M D Nalapat
That dynasty is not a killer for a political career became apparent
in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav
scripted bypoll victories for the SP and the RJD. Mulayam Singh’s low
profile in the UP campaign left the spotlight firmly on his telegenic
son. Since the SP’s Assembly elections defeat, rather than surrender to
the “Old” Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav instead widened the distance
between himself and the SP’s “Gen Past” and steadily raised the
percentage of new entrants in leadership positions. This has
strengthened the public perception of a reset SP. Likewise, the absence
of a jailed Lalu Yadav and the stepping back into home life by Rabri
Devi have by default handed over the leadership of the RJD to son
Tejashwi. Should he avoid the more egregious of both Lalu and Mulayam’s
misjudgements (such as giving prominence to majority community goons and
to Wahhabi fanatics in preference to decent and moderate individuals
from both communities), the RJD will be on course to win the largest
number of seats from Bihar in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Among Candidate
Modi’s strong electoral cards was his being from the “backward” castes,
but in the fifth year of his rule, birth identity matters much less than
the overall performance of his government. Despite becoming Prime
Minister of a country eager for change, Narendra Modi retained almost
the entire ministerial core team of Atal Behari Vajpayee, who had lost
the 2004 polls with this very team. In his suite of civil servants, the
new Prime Minister left pride of place to the very civil servants who
had enjoyed a privileged status during the decade when Manmohan Singh
was the Prime Minister, some of whom were accomplices to UPA-era
corruption. Not unexpectedly, Modi has found it difficult to implement
any except incremental changes in governance, while his most
consequential initiative, demonetisation, was rolled out in a manner
less than favourable to the economy. The UPA faced headwinds caused by
the 2008 global financial meltdown and high oil prices, and yet achieved
a higher average annual growth the next six years than Modi has managed
in four years of faster global growth and low oil prices.
70% of the BJP’s 2014 victory was due to voter
disenchantment with UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. Hence she being
perceived as the leader of a new anti-Modi alliance is likely to harm
rather than help the anti-BJP opposition at the hustings. Many in India,
especially among the middle classes, are disenchanted with Team Modi,
but few amongst them wish to see a return of the Sonia-led 2004-2014
UPA. Unless Rahul Gandhi rebrands the Congress Party in the way Akhilesh
Yadav is doing with the SP, its electoral results will remain well
below potential. Rahul has to transition from going by the guidance of
“Gen Past” the way he unfortunately did during 2004-2014, to promoting
“Gen Next” policies. Such a shift is essential to take advantage of the
palpable inability of the BJP to convince the bulk of the electorate
that a “Naya Soch” and not just a Naya Pradhan Mantri arrived in 2014.
In UP and Bihar last week, many of those who voted for Modi in 2014
stayed at home rather than vote. A year later, unless the direction and
chemistry of governance changes substantially from what it has been for
the previous four years, many BJP supporters of 2014 are likely to vote
for whatever opposition party or combination they believe can defeat
Modi. There has not been enough perceptional change in substance since
2014 from the Vajpayee (or the UPA) years to convince tens of millions
of voters in 2019 to wait till 2022 for Modi’s promised “Achhe Din” to
arrive. In both villages and cities, the effects of (a) demonetisation
(b) a harsh GST and (c) “tax and persecute” policies are turning away
voters. If the present situation continues, the best hope for Prime
Minister Modi would be for Sonia Gandhi to remain the source of Congress
policy, and the pivot around which opposition unity forms. The
continuation of Sonia as the primary face of the anti-BJP campaign may
cause enough anti-Modi voters to stay at home, thereby ensuring just
enough LS seats for the BJP in 2019 to enable the party to put together a
coalition government.
As much as for Amit Shah, the results in
UP are a wake-up call for Rahul Gandhi. It was an act of grotesquerie
for Sonia Gandhi to say, as she did recently, that her effort during the
UPA decade was to ensure “equal treatment of all”. This when she
ensured through abominations such as the RTE that frankly discriminatory
policies got deepened rather than jettisoned. Certainly the passing of
the RTI Act was a welcome move by the UPA, but the subsequent filling up
by Team Manmohan of RTI posts by former or current civil servants
(including policepersons) made a mockery of the purposes of the measure.
By now, the official machinery has managed to defang the RTI into an
irrelevance, with added speedbreakers and exemptions to ensure that the
lack of transparency of the pre-RTI past is fast returning. If he is to
succeed in positioning his party as the speartip of the anti-BJP
opposition for the 2019 polls, Rahul Gandhi will need to demand the
strengthening of the RTI. He must call for the elimination of
contra-democratic laws such as criminal defamation or laws against
freedom of diet and lifestyle. He will need to call for lower taxes and
regulations, and for giving the citizen of India the freedoms a
democracy of 70-year vintage should assure. Rahul will need to support
the consensus among the moderate majority to build a Ram Temple at
Ayodhya, and celebrate the past of India, rather than deny it. To
succeed, Rahul Gandhi needs to repudiate the failed policy mix of the
Congress Party’s Gen Past, and instead call for fulfilling the needs of
Gen Next.
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