Desperate times

FIRST EDIT

As the country has voted in the last but one phase of the five rounds of elections to the Lok Sabha, the race to be the single largest party is hotting up between the Congress and the BJP. With 60 of the 85 seats in the fourth phase being concentrated in Rajasthan (25), Uttar Pradesh (18) and West Bengal (17), the Congress is desperate  not only to increase its tally, but will be hoping that its new-found ally, the Trinamool Congress will do well in West Bengal. The stakes for the BJP, on the other hand, are high in Rajasthan, where it lost the Assembly election just a few months ago, but will be hoping to do better in the Lok Sabha polls.

Congress general secretary and heir apparent to PM’s throne, Rahul Gandhi’s mid-poll invitation to political ‘adversaries’ like Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and the Left parties to join hands with the Congress, betrays a certain nervousness about the election outcome, if not an indirect admission that his party and its assured allies might not do as well as expected. The Congress is also ready to open its doors to Jayalalitha of the AIADMK if her numbers help in stitching up a majority. The Left parties — once bitten, twice shy — have outrightly rejected the offer, while Nitish Kumar is in a happy position to wait till the results are out before deciding on which alliance to choose from. That Rahul Gandhi’s “grand dream” is full of pitfalls is demonstrated by the fact that Mamata Banerjee is already miffed by the talk of seeking the Left parties’ help and Jayalalitha simply cannot co-exist with Karunanidhi in the same alliance.

The Congress seems to have realised belatedly that it has repeated the mistakes that the BJP did in 2004 elections through sheer arrogance of power and its inability to read the ground realities correctly. Having rejected NCP leader Sharad Pawar’s advice to go to the polls as the United Progressive Alliance, which would have meant making some sacrifices, the Congress is now desperately seeking help from any and every quarter to be in a position to head the next government. Other political leaders are no novices not to see through the Congress’ game plan of making Manmohan Singh the prime minister so that the 10, Janpath loyalist vacates the seat to Rahul Gandhi a few months later. Unfortunately for the Congress,  the country has moved very far from looking at only one family to offer leadership.