E-Paper
Ecostani | Rahul Gandhi tastes electoral success but the journey ahead is arduous
Even after the polls, Gandhi has ticked the right boxes by raising critical issues in the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha
In politics, the perception of failure is more intense than success. Failure leads people to question the ability of a leader; the public tends to remember failure more than success. Congress leader and leader of opposition in Lok Sabha
![Churachandpur [Manipur], July 08 (ANI): Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi meets with victims of Manipur violence, at a relief camp in Churachandpur on Monday. (ANI Photo) (Congress X)](https://images.hindustantimes.com/img/2024/07/15/550x309/ANI-20240708197-0_1721058192580_1721058224963.jpg "Churachandpur [Manipur], July 08 (ANI): Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi meets with victims of Manipur violence, at a relief camp in Churachandpur on Monday. (ANI Photo) (Congress X)")
Rahul Gandhi should know: He has experienced it the most than any other political leader in India in the past 10 years.
But the truth is that there is no great success without failure. And, it may include epic electoral failures, which could threaten to finish off a leader’s political career.
Gandhi has faced two consecutive Lok Sabha election defeats and failure at several state assembly polls. He has faced dissent from senior party leaders over his style of functioning and there were voices, both inside and outside his party, which argued that he was a disaster for the Congress.
Gandhi took electoral defeats and failures in his stride and tried to reinvent himself with every fall. His Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022 was a landmark in that transformation as he walked from Kanyakumari to Kashmir covering 3,570 km in close to five months, getting him both noticed and appreciated for his endurance and fight against the seemingly infallible might of the ruling party.
That long walk was more than a journey: It was the first major step, which helped Gandhi transform his image from a political scion to a national leader.
The Yatra also laid the foundation for the 2024 Lok Sabha electoral performance, in which Congress won 99 seats, even though it appeared in the doldrums after the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Gandhi consistently harped on caste census to back his slogan of “Jitni Aabadi Utna Haq” (rights as per population proportion) and did not fall into the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) trap of turning polls into a fight between Hindu religion and others. He constantly spoke about the backwards, minorities, farmers and the poor even at the risk of repeating himself.
He was able to send a message to people that he was concerned about their well-being and that the policies of the ruling BJP had made the lives of common citizens difficult. His frequent claim that the BJP government was Adani-Ambani’s government also found resonance among people and he was perceived as one leader, who was constantly speaking against the BJP.
Opinion and exit polls during and before the Lok Sabha election did not give the Congress more than 60-70 seats, and the party winning 99 seats was seen as an achievement against the “mighty” and “resource-rich” BJP. Although still far from the majority mark of 273 in Lok Sabha, the performance indicated that the Congress can bounce back – but only if it strengthens its on-ground party network and reaches and focuses on people-centric issues.
To be sure, five years is a long time in politics.
Even after the polls, Gandhi has ticked the right boxes by raising critical issues in the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha: The farmers’ demands, the alleged NEET paper leak and the problem of unemployment.
Gandhi’s maiden speech as leader of the Opposition was one of the sharpest speeches delivered by an Opposition leader in Lok Sabha for a decade or so.
After the session, Gandhi’s visit to the camps of the displaced in Manipur – victims of a 14-month-long ethnic strife in the state -- showed his seriousness about raising people-centric issues in Parliament. He also visited the homes of victims of the Hathras stampede in which 121 people were killed, even though he did not speak against Suraj Pal alias Bhole Baba, who was holding the religious congregation where the incident happened.
While Gandhi may be ticking the right boxes, his party appears to be replicating the BJP model of attempting to weaken the opposition. The Congress has inducted at least eight lawmakers from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana in the past fortnight. The party also gave tickets to turncoats in the Lok Sabha polls within days of their joining, undermining its own leaders and workers, and indicating that it is no different from the BJP in certain electoral matters.
However, the 13 assembly by-poll results on Saturday showed voters don’t generally favour turncoats. Here are examples: In Himachal, the two independents, Hoshyar Singh and K L Thakur, who resigned from the assembly, and joined the BJP, lost to Congress, and the third independent, Ashish Sharma, won by a slender margin of 1,571 votes.
In Madhya Pradesh, Congress turncoat and BJP candidate, Kamlesh Pratap Shah, won by a thin margin of about 3,000 votes after trailing to Congress candidate Dheeran Invati for 14 of the 21 rounds. In Uttarakhand’s Badrinath, Congress turncoat and BJP candidate Rajendra Singh Bhandari lost to Congress candidate Lakhpat Singh Butola by over 5,000 votes, even though in bypolls people usually prefer the ruling party candidate. BJP is the ruling party in Uttarakhand.
The positive outcome of recent elections provides a glimmer of hope for Gandhi. He should not let his connection with people wither and must fulfil his duties as an effective Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha. He needs to visit states such as Andhra Pradesh and Odisha where the Congress has a chance to grab the main opposition space. Gandhi needs to break his party’s electoral dilemma in Gujarat and Rajasthan, the two important Hindi heartland states, where the Congress is the main opposition party and where it cannot piggyback on alliance partners.
As the BJP appears to cede space with Prime Minister Narendra Modi getting old and his replacement not apparent, it is the right time for Rahul Gandhi to shake off the shackles of past electoral setbacks and emerge as a national leader.
Chetan Chauhan, national affairs editor, analyses the most important environment and political story in the country this week
ABOUT THE AUTHORChetan ChauhanChetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More
