Unipolarity is harmful for democracy
and regional levels. Without the Congress in command, the Opposition lacks a cementing factor. Previous experiments with a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance have come a cropper. Besides regional parties in the crucial Hindi heartland states are currently in disarray.
After its rout earlier this year, the Samajwadi Party is tottering, Lalu Prasad and his family members are battling a series of corruption-related legal tangles. In the absence of a feisty challenge from the Congress, which seems to have more leaders than foot soldiers, a fragmented Opposition can be easily gobbled up by the preponderant BJP.
Anybody with knowledge of building a stable and expansive political organisation knows that party workers must be kept busy by engaging them constantly in agitational and mass contact programmes. While the BJP does that on a regular basis, the Congress party’s efforts at mobilisation are clearly lackadaisical and mostly unfocused. Its cadre is galvanised only when any member of its First Family comes under attack. Protests by Congress workers in many parts of the country following the deplorable attack on Rahul Gandhi’s motorcade in Gujarat last week, is a case in point. While such protest is justified, how does it really concern the common man? Nitish Kumar (shortly before quitting his alliance with Lalu Prasad) rightly asked as to whether the Opposition has an alternate narrative? Clearly it does not.
Congress and most non-BJP parties have failed to grasp that the country has moved beyond the secular-communal debate. So, apart from leadership and organisational deficiencies, the Opposition lacks an ideological and programmatic alternative as well.
Till such time as the Congress reinvents itself and promotes a new, younger leadership, the party does not seem to have a future ahead. The irony is that there is no dearth of younger leaders in the party.
A vibrant and vigilant Opposition is the sine-qua-non of parliamentary democracy. The BJP may have worked hard to gain its dominant position in Indian politics and even acquired TINA status, but unipolarity is harmful for a democracy in the long run.
However, an Opposition lacking an agenda and leadership will remain confined to the peripheries while Narendra Modi reigns supreme.