Even more than the assembly results, especially in Uttar Pradesh, being a disaster for the Congress, it represents a personal setback for Rahul Gandhi, who had invested so much political capital in the outcome by campaigning intensively.
In fact, it is also a body blow to the dynasty since Priyanka Vadra-Gandhi had emerged out of her seclusion to join Congress president Sonia Gandhi to boost the party's electoral prospects.
There were also uncalled for, veiled suggestions of an imposition of President's rule if there was a hung assembly, recalling the days when such rule was the stick which the centre routinely wielded against non-Congress governments.
But, neither this threat nor the other tricks worked. The MBCs and the anti-Dalits were not impressed. The sops for them were seen as mere campaign rhetoric. Even Rahul's theatrical act of tearing up a rival party's manifesto did not create a ripple. If the Congress has to learn any lesson from the reverses, it is that the party must adhere to its core values - secularism instead of minority appeasement, and a non-casteist approach which shuns sectarianism.
It also has to act in a more dignified manner and show respect to autonomous institutions. And, if its national-level leaders are to make an impact in the states, the government at the centre has to demonstrate a greater sense of purpose and not give an impression of policy paralysis.
Considering how Rahul had similarly drawn a blank in the 2010 Bihar elections, it may not be too far-fetched to suggest that the fabled charisma of the dynasty is no longer effective. The negative impact of the results on the party's avowed objective of grooming Rahul for the prime ministerial post in 2014 is also obvious.
Arguably, what went wrong for the Congress were its too-clever-by-half policies of playing the caste card when the party's traditional image and, indeed, its inestimable heritage has been its all-inclusive character which makes no distinctions between caste and community.
Yet, it tried to wean some of the non-Yadav groups among the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) - known as the Most Backward Castes (MBCs) - away from the Samajwadi Party, and the anti-Dalits, or the non-Jatav group of Dalits, from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Needless to say, the Yadavs constitute the Samajwadi Party's core base of support, and the Jatavs or Chamars of the BSP.
Along with its caste card, the Congress also tried to play the minority card by promising 4.5 percent quota for the OBC Muslims within the overall 27 percent OBC quota and defying the Election Commission in the process with one union minister even urging the commission to hang him if he was not allowed to speak in favour of the underprivileged.
Just as the voters saw through the Congress' opportunistic manoeuvres of trying to erode the support bases of other parties and treating the minorities as purchasable commodities, the electorate was also clear-sighted enough to realise that Mayawati's grandiose projects of building statues of herself and other Dalit icons, as well elephantine monuments to its election symbol, were not the answer to Uttar Pradesh's manifold problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment