The coming Assembly elections in Maharashtra, which are to be held on November 20, is a huge test for the Congress and the parties of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. If the Maha Vikas Aghadi fails to win back Maharashtra from the not quite legitimate regime of Eknath Shinde and his Mahayuti team that is obviously led by the BJP, the floodgates will open for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to refresh his reputation and project himself as India’s most successful leader. For the BJP, it will be a windfall, a mandate to ram its agenda on voters made vulnerable by the failures of the Congress and the INDIA bloc parties.
Not winning in Maharashtra is the same as failing to defend its agenda of protecting the Constitution, democracy, federalism and the idea of India as a secular, communally diverse but harmonious state committed to empowering the marginalised through an expansion of the principle of positive discrimination. Winning is what INDIA as an efficiently working coalition of anti-BJP parties needs to do; not just in Maharashtra, but also in Jharkhand, and in Uttar Pradesh, where byelections are also due this year, plus Delhi and in Bihar in 2025.
It may be a tussle between keeping the twin objectives of winning in Maharashtra and other states while focusing on the larger objective of downsizing the BJP in the states it currently rules and defeating the BJP by 2029. Not doing so would mean helping the BJP race forward in fulfilling the Narendra Modi government’s third term in office declared targets of changing the format of elections in India, that is “One Nation-One Election”, and legislating the Uniform Civil Code as a way of putting the Muslim minority in its place, which is obedient to the laws of the 80 per cent Hindu majority by abrogating the Muslim Personal Law Act.
The fight, or rather the choice, is between a homogenised concept of India that serves the BJP-RSS purpose of establishing hegemony and transforming India’s boisterous multi-party competitive politics reflecting the vibrancy of its democracy into a uniform, unipolar politics dominated by the BJP, its time tables and its agendas. Therefore, acting gormless, that is creating an impression of being both dull and dense, by deliberately setting themselves to compete against each other as the parties of the INDIA bloc have done till now, would be effectively turning themselves into a dummy Opposition.
This may have suited for some strange purpose of the Congress and the INDIA bloc parties earlier.
After the Congress debacle in Haryana, where it threw away a victory, because it lost sight of the larger objective in its greed to grab power to feed its colossal but very shaky claim to being the country’s grand old party, there is an imperative to strategise, to draw up tactical plans and work in a coordinated way to contain the BJP, which is now back to believing that it is an invincible juggernaut.
It would be a pity if the Congress is fixated on bargaining over seats as a potential competitor against the Sharad Pawar NCP and Uddhav Thackeray Shiv Sena, when it needs to function as a team member. Not the Congress and for that matter not even the other parties of the MVA have as yet mastered the art of pulling together by pooling strengths to minimise weaknesses.
In Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha election, the Congress did win 13 seats, which is more than any of the other parties, including the BJP. That, however, does not make it the lead partner in Maharashtra. As regional parties against whom the BJP played dirty politics that ended with a split of the Shiv Sena and the NCP, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray have a larger fight which they must be helped to win. If the Congress fails to give support, it may as well call it quits and exit alliance politics and the INDIA bloc.
Its incompetence and its narcissism are off putting. So are its dull wits. The Haryana win for Narendra Modi and the BJP-RSS was an unexpected boon. It reinstated the Congress, its dysfunctional central leadership and Rahul Gandhi as the principal enemy, a large and obvious target against which scoring a bull’s eye is easy. The Congress should have figured this out.
It therefore contributed to the BJP’s campaign, enabling it to combine toxic tirades against the Congress by branding it as an advocate of Muslim League politics led by urban anti-Sanatan Naxals with unblinking and unabashed plagiarism by marketing the much despised “revdis” like the Lado Laxmi Yojana, a Rs 1,500 a month direct bank transfer to poor women, or a stipend for unemployed youth, old age and disability pensions. It helped the BJP to effectively consolidate Hindu votes, micro-manage caste equations and through promised handouts as it wooed disgruntled voters grappling with the impact of hardships, including inflation, unemployment and distressed women. The BJP learnt from the Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh elections that cash handouts can make voters change their minds.
The Congress, on the contrary, realised nothing. In Haryana, it did not bother to design and deliver a campaign that could counter the BJP’s open-fisted seduction of voters. It banked on its past, its old guard and a bunch of managers who had proved their incompetence time and again. It is entirely understandable that the Samajwadi Party’s reaction to the Haryana results was a decision to name six out of 10 candidates without consulting the Congress for the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly byelections. The Aam Aadmi Party’s decision that it would go it alone in the Delhi elections is tit-for-tat for what the Congress did in Haryana. Mamata Banerjee lashed out as did the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut at the Congress. And with reason; the Congress is neither a physically fit nor mentally cutting-edge political organisation.
Why it matters is simple. Legislation like the One Nation-One Election and the Uniform Civil Code need constitutional amendments. These amendments need to be endorsed by half of the state legislatures and Union territories. Losing a state, or rather failing to win a state that was on the BJP’s list, is one more blow to the Congress’ vow and the INDIA bloc’s commitment to defending democracy, protecting the Constitution and its foundational principles of federalism, secularism, equality and religious tolerance. To defend the line separating the personal and private domains of the individual that cannot be trespassed by the State, regardless of its authority, the Congress and the INDIA bloc need to stop competing against each other in every match and unite as a team, playing the same tournament.