Whither the Opposition?

The health of the nation is precarious, and so is the health of our democracy. The country is yet to fully recover from the massive and lethal spread of the second wave of Covid-19, which saw the numbers rise to almost four lakh cases per day and the death-toll hitting over 4,000 a day at peak. It is widely estimated that the real figures were two to five times higher. At such a juncture, in the crucial period from May 2 to mid-May, the Union government went into a state of coma, with the PM and the Union Home Minister perhaps shell-shocked after their party’s defeat in the Bengal elections. And the Centre decided to shed its responsibility to procure vaccines for the states in a complete negation of its principal role under the National Disaster Management Act, which it had used to centralise all decision-making during the first phase of Covid-19.

The Supreme Court, in a refreshingly renewed role, asserted its prerogative of judicial review over the Centre’s erratic vaccination policy, calling it “irrational and arbitrary” in a suo motu hearing on June 1. The Prime Minister, without referring to the Supreme Court’s queries but obliquely responding to them, announced on June 7 that the Centre would procure 75% of vaccines and distribute it free of cost to the states starting June 21.

Where is the Parliament in all this? What about parliamentary review over the Executive? If such massive election rallies could be held in four large states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Assam for elections, why can’t a few hundred MPs meet in Parliament and debate about the national crisis on hand and the way the Executive is functioning?

What are the opposition parties doing to hold the government accountable? The Congress seems confined to the Twitter world. Its interim president Sonia Gandhi has once again postponed party elections and has delayed the inevitable. The ‘G-23’, who wrote that famous letter seeking party reforms, have lost steam and seem to be trying to get back into the good books of the leadership or have accepted their own irrelevance. The ‘old guard’ continues to support the mother and son just so they can remain in an effete body called the Congress Working Committee. Rahul Gandhi manages to strike an instant rapport with his audiences but then somehow fails to communicate consistently. He is no match to the banal dramatics of his rival who excels in communicating but without being credible, as the Bengal election results show. Rahul has neither organisational skills nor inspiring leadership to keep his flock together. Among the younger leaders, Sachin Pilot remains the best bet for the party, but then would all the elders join hands to support him? Rahul has already said that the next president of the party should be from outside the Gandhi family. Who could that be? Who is the most anodyne person after Manmohan Singh? Probably none. It is true that Pilot blotted his record, but can he be forgiven one transgression?

Read | Be it young or old leaders, Congress faces a commitment crisis

Can the Congress revive itself and lead the old combination of UPA again? For that, perhaps, Sonia Gandhi must remain chairperson of a revitalised UPA, which should include the TMC, SP and BSP, too. It is certainly not necessary to project a PM candidate before the elections as Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati, Tejashwi Yadav, Stalin, Uddhav Thackery, Arvind Kejriwal and Sitaram Yechury are all crowd-pullers in their own states. The presence of such a large gathering of political leaders on one stage has always been electrifying. It is, of course, a big challenge to get them all together, but if the opportunity presented by the ruling party’s biggest failure of governance cannot bring them together, nothing else will.

No other party has a machinery geared to fight elections like the BJP does. Nor its money power. Nor do any of the other parties have the backing of a cadre-based organisation like the RSS. Yet, the BJP lost, and it lost badly in Bengal. And it fell on its face in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where it had claimed it would make breakthroughs. But the party picks itself up and readies for another fight. It has already started preparing for the Uttar Pradesh elections next year.

But all is not well within the party unit in UP. A Modi confidante, the former Gujarat cadre IAS officer A K Sharma, was sought to be made the third Deputy CM in the state, but Yogi Adityanath has so far firmly kept him out of the cabinet. Parleys are on between Modi, Shah and Yogi, but will Modi take this humiliation lightly or will he enforce his diktat? Nevertheless, can Yogi escape responsibility for the utter failure of his administration in handling the pandemic?

Do BJP MLAs think Modi and Amit Shah can bring them back to power, after the duo’s disastrous show in Bengal? Or do they trust Yogi, whose reputation is already in the mud, to do the magic? The rank and file must be confused and uncertain. Will the RSS bail out the BJP once again? The Sarsanghachalak-in-waiting, Dattatreya Hosabale, shuttled between Delhi and Lucknow. What message did he carry from Modi to Yogi? Can the RSS sell a brand that is so tainted? Will the millions of workers who lost their livelihoods still vote for BJP? Will all those thousands who lost their family members to Covid still vote for Yogi?

On the other side, neither Akhilesh Yadav nor Mayawati can do in UP what Mamata did in Bengal. Will they join hands again? Or will the BJP throw Mayawati a carrot and win her over? What space does the Congress have in UP’s caste calculus? Who will the Muslim and Dalit votes go to? Will Owaisi go to UP and divide the Muslim vote? The bottom line is, the opposition parties must fight as one unit, or they will hang separately.

(The writer is a former Cabinet Secretariat official)