The emergence of candidate Rahul
ter Narendra Modi, the most potent weapon in the party’s campaign arsenal. He campaigned relentlessly in both states, and the party’s performance indicates that he remains the most popular political leader in the country. The BJP will be hoping that this popularity will win it even more votes in a Lok Sabha election in which national issues should ideally matter more (and national leaders have more appeal) than they do during state elections. The party will clearly emphasise national issues more in the run-up to 2019, perhaps even try to create some, even as it tries harder to make the parliamentary election a mano-a-mano contest between Modi and Gandhi.
As both parties prepare for 2019, Gandhi, and the Congress, would do well to remember what worked for them, especially in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
In both states, the party has powerful local leaders who represent a combination of youth and experience. In Rajasthan it has Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. In Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia. Sure, Gandhi will now have to choose chief ministers for the two states from among them, but the results have highlighted the value of having strong regional leaders driving the campaign.
The Congress backed this up with the use of data analytics, a smartphone enabled booth-level network of workers (both were hitherto used only by the BJP), and a reasonably scientific way of picking candidates, although the process wasn’t entirely glitchfree, especially in Rajasthan, where the party may have lost as many as 10 seats to rebels.
The BJP, which, over the past five years, has become used to not losing, will be disappointed with the results that came out on December 11, although it will take them because it knows that things could have been much worse.
The Congress will be happy about the results, although it will be left with the feeling that it could have done better.
At 48, nearing the end of his first year as the party’s president, Gandhi seems to have finally come of age as a political leader — not enough to take on Modi, perhaps, but definitely enough to become the face of a grouping that does.