Will Priyanka’s appeal save Congress the blushes?
‘Goongi Gudiya’. That’s how Ram Manohar Lohia described Indira Gandhi in her early years in politics. The voiceless doll. Not much later, as if in retribution, she became the maximum leader of the Congress party. Then, she rang in the Emergency. Indira was India and India, Indira, Dev Kanta Barua, then president of the party sang in absolute sycophancy.
A generation later, her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi was also taunted as a goongi gudiya by the opposition and by some even within the party. Fashioning herself as the NehruGandhi family’s dutiful ‘bahu’ who was being treated unfairly by her political detractors, Sonia took charge of the party after much dithering on her part and plenty of grovelling by Congressmen chanting the slogan of ‘Sonia Laao, Congress Bachaao’ (Bring Sonia, save the party). In the untold history of India’s grand old party, the phase leading up to it could have been called the ‘Time of the Signs’. Despite Narasimha Rao being the party’s prime minister, its inside narrative was all about senior leaders holding back-channel meetings with Sonia Gandhi. Most of them were left to interpret every tilt of her head, momentary nod or wave of the hand, wondering what it meant in each context. The most powerful person in the party spoke very little. After the Congress lost power in 1998, it was a divided house, threatening to fall off the electoral map, and partymen were desperate for a Nehru-Gandhi to revive it. She led them back to power in 2004 and came into her own as a leader, strategically turning down the Prime Minister’s post in response to being called a ‘foreigner’ by opposition campaigners, and naming Manmohan Singh for it in a move that catapulted her into the electorate’s consciousness as a party chief with political acumen.
Following the party’s most disastrous performance to date— in the 2014 General Election—and the arrival of Narendra Modi as one of India’s most popular prime ministers ever, the Congress is again in need of life support. The DK Baruas of today are now clamouring for Indira Gandhi’s granddaughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to wave a magic wand and give the party the required makeover. Two issues lend this cry its urgency: Sonia Gandhi’s failing health and 46-yearold party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s apparent inability to gain any significant electoral traction for the party.
It was a foregone Pavlovian reflex. With a prolonged phase of political wilderness staring them in the face, Congress leaders have fallen back on Priyanka Gandhi to lead them out of the woods.
The Congress is badly in need of a miracle in Uttar Pradesh to kick-start a revival in the rest of the country in time enough for the General Election of 2019. Between the Lok Sabha polls of 2009 and 2014, the BJP’s vote share at the national level shot up from under 19 to 31 per cent. In the same period, the Congress figure dipped from 28 to 19 per cent. In UP, the BJP netted a whopping 42.3 per cent of all votes in 2014, while the Samajwadi Party got 22.2 per cent and the BSP nearly 20 per cent; India’s ruling party won 71 of the state’s 80 seats, with its ally, the Apna Dal, bagging two. The state’s incumbent, the SP, won a mere five seats. The Congress managed to win only two, Rae Bareli for Sonia and Amethi for Rahul Gandhi (though with far slimmer victory margins than in 2009), chalking up only 7.5 per cent of the state’s votes. A Modi wave had swept aside all casteand-class poll calculations, with BJP attracting a large proportion of non-Yadav OBC votes and non-Chamar Dalit votes, adding vast numbers to its traditional support base of uppercastes and trading classes. Priyanka Gandhi’s formal ‘plunge’ into active electoral politics— having made ‘guest appearances’ along the campaign trail in the family pocket
The party is badly in need of a miracle in Uttar Pradesh to kick-start a revival in the rest of the country in time enough for the general Election of 2019
boroughs of Rae Bareli and Amethi in 2014— comes at a time that the Assembly poll result of UP could shape national level politics from here onwards. This time, she is poised to campaign in other parts of UP as well. The party leadership has decided it was time her popular appeal was put to the ballot test. The ‘Priyanka Laao, Congress Bachaao’ campaign began in the latter half of 2016, even though it was Rahul Gandhi who was to lead a series of yatras across UP, according to the party’s plan. he alliance the SP was yet to materialise. Priyanka was a long shot, but the only big one left in the Congress arsenal. A couple of years younger than her brother Rahul and a mother of two, Priyanka has stayed away from the rough-and-tumble of politics so far. Her political instincts are untested. Much of the buzz around her mass appeal has been created by her striking resemblance to her grandmother, which it’s believed, would translate into Congress support from voters under 30. The results of her intermittent flirtations with electoral politics in Amethi and Rae Bareli have been mixed, at best. She had made stage-managed appearances with her two children to woo voters, and taken a few potshots at Modi. The decision to tie up with the SP this time has made it clear, nonetheless, that the Congress has no illusions of leaping ahead in its count of seats in the UP Assembly. Neither of Rahul Gandhi’s appointed strategists in UP, has been able to come up with a strategy to optimise the party’s chances in UP, with or without an alliance. With or without Priyanka playing a role, in this analysis, whether the Congress alliance can help shore the SP up remains doubtful. To make matters worse, not only did a Bihar-type maha gathbandhan of anti-BJP forces fail to work out, the SP could not join hands with the Rashtriya Lok Dal in western UP. In Bihar’s Assembly polls of 2015, Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal had brought its hefty Muslim-Yadav votebank to the table, adding noticeably to the Janata Dal-United’s own, and a combination of caste arithmetic and development work led the grand anti-BJP alliance to power. That isn’t the case in UP. Can Priyanka Gandhi’s charisma make a difference? Congress is banking on untested mystique. — The Open