Congress must focus on Nyay and ignore Modi’s communal diversions

It is clear that the BJP will not engage on substantive issues, but will once again fall back on its established tropes — making a bogeyman of Pakistan and demonising the minorities

The Congress released its election manifesto on April 5, continuing to stress the issues of livelihood, equity, and justice — its Nyay platform — it formulated during Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, held between September 7, 2022, and January 30, 2023.

These issues were present incipiently in the Congress’ 2019 election manifesto, which focused on jobs, farmers’ issues, healthcare, and broke ground with its version of a universal basic income — the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (Nyay). What has changed in this edition of the manifesto, named the ‘Nyay Patra’, is that it has filled out the social and economic programme, especially with its focus on the five pillars of justice — Yuva Nyay, Nari Nyay, Kisan Nyay, Shramik Nyay, and Hissedari Nyay — which contain 25 guarantees.

I won’t go into the details of the manifesto, the thrust is self-explanatory. But a manifesto is not sufficient to drive the election process, unless it is made so by the campaign and the electioneering. Thus, the Congress needs not only to publicise its programme by hammering it home at every opportunity, but also by resolutely refusing to be diverted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s misdirection, which aims at occluding its failures on precisely these fronts.

The BJP government has failed to provide employment on anywhere near the scale promised, it has failed to double farmers’ incomes, it has allowed the prices of essentials to rise in an ungoverned manner. It has overseen the immiserisation of the many, and the vast and spectacular growth in the wealth of the few, especially crony capitalists. In its latest rich list, Forbes counts a record 200 billionaires in India, third after the United States and China, while its performance in lifting people out of poverty in the past decade has been way below par.

It has become clear in the early phase of campaigning that the BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will not engage on substantive issues, but will once again fall back on its established tropes — making a bogeyman of Pakistan and demonising the minorities. Let’s look at a speech delivered by Modi on April 6.

At a rally in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Modi referred to the Congress manifesto as similar to that of the Muslim League. ‘The manifesto of the Congress…shows it cannot fulfil the aspirations of the people. The Congress manifesto has the imprint of the policies of the Muslim League before independence,’ he said.

We do not expect Modi to be well-versed in India’s history, but what does this inane statement mean? Obviously, its only purpose is to besmirch by association, especially because the Congress has an ally in Kerala called the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), which has nothing to do with the Muslim League Modi referred to. On the face of it, this canard should be punished by the Election Commission of India (ECI) if the Congress makes a complaint. But we know what the ECI’s record on entertaining petitions against the prime minister, the Union home minister and other BJP heavyweights is like.

On the same day, he underlined his authoritarian ambitions, if they needed to be in the first place, by threatening that he would take more sweeping action on corruption when he came to power for a third term, and that whatever has happened in the past 10 years has been a ‘trailer’. It’s not hard to decode the threat against Opposition parties and leaders implicit in this statement. After all, the record shows that 23 of 25 Opposition leaders against whom cases had been registered were let off the hook once they joined the BJP.

There’s also the issue of the dark clouds hanging over the ruling party itself, occasioned by the lack of action in cases where the party is involved — the Vyapam case stands out. But the opacity of schemes like that of the electoral bonds, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and the PM's Citizen Assistance & Relief in Emergency Situations Fund, which is subject to no audit whatever invites continuing judicial and citizenly scrutiny.

The Congress must continue, as it is trying to do, to focus on real issues and the delinquencies of the regime in power. Winning elections by aping the perversions of the regime, its leaders and the party that runs it should not be the strategy.

It has, thus far, done well not to have been drawn by the communal rhetoric that Modi has been spewing at rally after rally in the past week.

(Suhit K Sen is author of ‘The Paradox of Populism: The Indira Gandhi Years, 1966-1977’.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.