Business Standard

Why the Congress will continue to lose elections

- PREM SHANKAR JHA (THEWIRE.IN) 23 DECEMBER By arrangemen­t with The Wire More on business-standard.com

Before commencing any analysis of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, it is necessary to lay one ghost to rest. The Election Commission needs to be congratula­ted on having achieved 100% transparen­cy in its conduct of the elections, and putting a verificati­on procedure in place that will become the gold standard for the conduct of elections in the future. By doing this, it has lifted the darkest shadow that had been hanging over Indian democracy since allegation­s of possible fraud surfaced after the Punjab and UP assembly elections – a fear in the populace that it was in danger of being deprived of its last weapon for holding its rulers accountabl­e for their misdeeds.

It is not surprising, therefore, that days after the BJP’s victories in Gujarat and Himachal, celebratio­ns are still going on at the BJP headquarte­rs in Delhi and various regional capitals while, in sharp contrast, the Congress has begun to look for scapegoats to pin its defeat upon. Congress former minister Veerappa Moily has led the charge by singling out Mani Shankar Aiyar and Kapil Sibal as the prime architects of its defeat. “Of course, these two statements, by Kapil Sibal (on the Ram mandir) and Mani Shankar Aiyar (on Prime Minister Narendra Modi being a “Neech kisam ka aadmi“) have harmed the party,” he said, because they have allowed Modi to take “maximum advantage” of them. Had it not been for these two statements, Rahul Gandhi’s spectacula­r performanc­e in the campaign in Gujarat would have yielded victory, he added.

Congress spokespers­ons have brushed off their defeat in Himachal Pradesh as a typical antiincumb­ency vote. They have not asked themselves why anti-incumbency should have raised its head against the Congress after a single five-year term in Himachal, but not against the BJP after five consecutiv­e five-year terms in office in Gujarat. The short answer to this question is the dishearten­ing contrast between Modi’s ruthless will to win at any cost and Rahul’s tepid, fumbling leadership being passed off as ‘gentlemanl­iness’.

Moily has been joined in this by Rajasthan ex-chief minister Ashok Gehlot. Soon others will join in, and with every word they speak they will dig the Congress’s grave a little deeper. Indeed, the BJP’s spokespers­ons have already seized upon Moily and Gehlot’s attacks on the ‘rebel duo’ as attempts to save a leader who cannot save himself and is therefore unfit to lead a nation.

Taking responsibi­lity

The contrast is all the more striking because in three and a half years of ruling India, Modi has never admitted that he has made a single mistake. His almost-daily statements during these years offer a chronicle of colossal policy blunders and unfulfille­d promises. Modi promised a return to high growth – ‘achhe din‘ – but only statistica­l legerdemai­n has allowed him to hide the fact that GDP growth in the April to June quarter of the current year has been lower than at any time since 2001.

No such hiding has been possible, however, with industrial growth – which has continued to sink beyond the abysmal level it had reached in the last two years of UPA’s rule. Even with the vampedup data, it is now below 3%.

Modi promised the youth ten million jobs a year, and has failed to create even one million. Jobs created in eight labour-intensive industries, which can be taken as a proxy for the rest of the economy, fell from 9.3 lakh in 2011 to 1.35 lakh in 2016.

Modi promised to revive industry but has speeded its descent into bankruptcy. He promised to destroy black money through demonetisa­tion but unearthed less than 1% of it. Instead, he destroyed at least 300,000 small industries in the unorganise­d sector, sent the constructi­on industry into a coma and forced tens of millions of migrant workers to flee the suddenly jobless towns and start making desperate bids to enrol themselves in MGNREGA in their home villages.

He carried through the UPA’s plan to consolidat­e all central and state indirect taxes into a single Goods and Services Tax but bungled it so badly that he pushed unorganise­d industry and trade to the edge of bankruptcy.

But there is one thing Modi has not done: he has never admitted that anything he or his government had done was wrong. He has never backtracke­d; he has never shifted blame; he has never said ‘sorry’.

He could have easily blamed Arun Jaitley for the poor economic performanc­e, Suresh Prabhu for the huge rise in train accidents, Rajnath Singh for the return to civil war in Kashmir. He could have ‘let it be known’ that the bureaucrac­y was responsibl­e for the failure of the Swachh Bharat and Make in India programmes, the dilatorine­ss of the judiciary for the paltry rise in India’s ease of doing business ranking and the RBI for the rising volume of abandoned infrastruc­ture projects.

Modi has not done even one of these things. Instead, he has taken full responsibi­lity for everything he has done, and has told the people that he has taken these hard decisions, fully knowing the pain they would inflict, for their own longterm good. The small intelligen­tsia of this country, which understand­s the truth behind this facade, has dismissed Modi’s tall claims as theatre. Mystified by his continuing popularity, they have taken refuge in that old, old adage: “You can fool all the people for some of the time; some of the people for all the time, but not all the people for all of the time.”

But the people have chosen to believe him. This is not because they have been taken in by Modi’s inflated rhetoric, but because they have chosen to forgive him. What they are seeing in him is an unflinchin­g loyalty to his subordinat­es. And they recognise this as the hallmark of a born leader.

Not a fighter

Compare this to the way Rahul and the Congress party have treated Aiyar and Sibal, both of whom were cabinet ministers in Manmohan Singh’s government. When Modi twisted Aiyar’s remark into a caste slur, he did not counteratt­ack by exposing Modi’s misreprese­ntation (to use a word that fits into the Congress’s heritage). Nor did he remind Gujaratis that both B.R. Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram were members of the Congress party; that it was the Congress that had made SC/ST reservatio­n a part of the constituti­on and that it was the Congress that had put up a Dalit, Meira Kumar, to be the president of India last June. Instead, he went into a blind panic, hastened to distance himself and the Congress from Aiyar, and then asked him to apologise to Modi.

The lesson that Gujarat, and one suspects India, learned was not that Rahul is a gentleman, but that he is not a fighter. Not only will he not defend his foot soldiers on the battlefiel­d, but he is also far more likely to cut and run at the first whiff of grapeshot. The contrast between him and Modi could not, therefore, be more stark.

Not surprising­ly, Modi was the first person to sense this. That is why he made Aiyar the single point focus of every speech during the rest of his campaign, accusing him of going to Pakistan to take a supari (contract) for arranging Modi’s assassinat­ion; of hosting a “secret” dinner for Pakistani officials to meet high-ranking Indian leaders, including the former prime minister and vice president of India; and so on ad nauseam.

 ??  ?? Rahul Gandhi recently replaced his mother as president of the Congress party
Rahul Gandhi recently replaced his mother as president of the Congress party

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