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Opposition must fight BJP on the streets not social media | Opinion
The number of opposition members in the Lok Sabha may have dwindled to a mere 188 against 353 of the ruling National Democratic Alliance in a house of 545 (two are nominated), but the strength of the non-BJP parties remains high.
In 1975, when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency rule in the country, most firebrand opposition leaders were sent to jail. All communication routes were clogged. The media was gagged and the social media was not even born then.
Yet in two years, the incarcerated stalwarts in the opposition camp turned the tables on the Iron Lady, as Indira Gandhi was known.
The elections were announced on January 18, 1977. Subsequently, the opposition leaders were released; within two days they formed the Janata Party. Over a month later they decimated the Congress, winning 295 of the 542 Lok Sabha seats.
How did they communicate from jail? The leaders adopted innovative methods to exchange notes through runners.
The new-age leaders of today have social media with an overdose of information. Few who are in jail manage access to that information.
The question is, can the fragile opposition fight their political battle against the mighty Bhartiya Janata Party on social media or should they take to the streets? Many are asking: “Why is the opposition not visible outside the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha?’
The number of opposition members in the Lok Sabha may have dwindled to a mere 188 against 353 of the ruling National Democratic Alliance in a house of 545 (two are nominated), but the strength of the non-BJP parties remains high.
Of the six national parties recognized by the Election Commission, five are in the opposition. Sometimes one wonders if the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M), and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) should actually be categorized as national parties, given that their influence has been eroded.
In the south, regional parties continue to hold fort; in Uttar Pradesh, both Samajwadi Party and BSP have caste and cadre loyalties; in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and in Odisha Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal remain a force to reckon with. In bipolar states like Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, the BJP’s political alternative has been the Congress, with which it rotates power.
But the Congress as well as the regional parties are relying heavily on social media, the champion of which is in fact the BJP, the party they wish to weaken.
How can the opposition win their battle on Twitter? Who is the audience? While their political base is the rural masses, the tweets are trolled and followed in urban areas.
On the other hand, the BJP has not only captured the social media but also dominates the rural psyche. And while the BJP is evolving strategies for each and every state and constituency, the opposition is content with a couple of tweets.
The Gandhis can take a lesson from Indira Gandhi’s political book. She had returned to power in 1980 -- within a short span of two-and-a-half years -- primarily because of two reasons – one her relentless campaign across the country, second the collapse of Janata Party.
Today, Priyanka Gandhi sporadically visits places where a heinous crime has taken place, raising public concern, but the rest of the Congress politicians are busy displaying their energy on the social media.
While Mamata Banerjee is fighting a no-holds-barred battle against the BJP on the streets of Kolkata, BSP leader Mayawati, who joined the social media quite late in the day, is busy tweeting. There is learning for her from the responses to her tweets that they mirror frustration of her supporters.
Today, when Dalits are feeling alienated and want her to launch aandolans, she is holding party meetings or messaging on social media. Even though Mayawati represents a literate class, how many of her supporters follow tweets or Facebook?.
Take the SP. An isolated Mulayam Singh Yadav had experimented with several political combinations and kept the organization well-oiled by holding daily demonstrations. Yet his party revived after he formed an alliance with the BSP and later took the secularism vs communalism fight to the streets. However, the new leadership of SP faces a dilemma. The alliances are not working as Modi-Yogi’s Hindutva has submerged the debate over secular vs communal.
While many in the old guard want him to step into his father’s style of functioning, Akhilesh Yadav may be looking for a political issue that could galvanise the masses against the BJP, somewhat like Amit Shah’s statement on Hindi that activated the politicians and the people of the South.
However, the real political battle can be fought only in the physical arena and not in the virtual space. The earlier the opposition realizes this, the better it would be for its survival. Or else BJP is here to stay, both in the physical and virtual worlds.
