JOIN USFocus on local issues pays, but Congress yet to crack a national strategy
A big win in Karnataka has undoubtedly come as a huge morale booster for a woe-ridden Congress, but it can ill-afford to rest on the laurels of this victory as bigger challenges lie ahead.
The grand old party will have to face the semi-finals in November-December, and then the grand finale in April-May 2024. The five states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram are going to polls later this year. Along with Karnataka, these states are expected to set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
But a victory in the states does not automatically guarantee power at the national level. In 2018, the Congress won Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, and formed a coalition government in Karnataka, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went on to record an astounding victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Obviously, there are varying factors in the states and at the national level. Hence, the victory in three states did not enable the Congress to oust the BJP at the Centre. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to power in 2019 with a much bigger mandate due to various factors, including the Pulwama attack in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel lost their lives, and the subsequent airstrikes on terror camps inside Pakistan. These two incidents were game changers.
Over the years, it has also been established that the same electoral strategy cannot be used for assembly and general elections. In Karnataka, the Congress successfully fought on local issues. It targeted the state BJP on the issue of corruption and got the ‘40 percent commission government’ tag stuck on the Basavaraj Bommai government. Earlier in Himachal Pradesh too, the Congress trumped the BJP by fighting a highly-localised election.
For the Lok Sabha elections, however, it needs a comprehensive strategy to take on Modi and the BJP.
That said, the Karnataka outcome is also an opportunity for the Congress to play a leading role in bringing all the opposition parties together. It must shed its big brother attitude and keep aside all its differences with other regional parties to put up a joint fight. It would be extremely difficult for a divided Opposition to counter Modi’s popularity and the BJP’s formidable election machinery. Karnataka could be a gateway for that much-needed opposition unity.
As far as the BJP is concerned, it too needs to bring about a change in its electoral strategy. Pitching Modi and not the local leadership against its rivals hasn’t worked for the BJP in the two recent state elections, first in Himachal Pradesh, and now Karnataka. Even attempts to polarise the elections in these two states visibly didn’t work. The massive anti-incumbency against the state governments prevailed over all other issues.
Another lesson for the Congress from Karnataka is that it must raise people-centric issues rather than keep the attack on Modi in the upcoming assembly elections in five states. That strategy can be used in the Lok Sabha polls.
But one big advantage that the BJP has as compared to its rivals is the lack of a credible face against Modi. So far, the battle between Modi and Rahul Gandhi at the national level has been one sided. Rahul Gandhi has tried hard to change the public perception about him. Through his Bharat Jodo Yatra, a nationwide mass contact programme, he has been able to shed his perceived image of a non-serious politician who would take frequent breaks from the heat and dust of politics in India to spend time abroad. Whether the yatra will pay rich electoral dividends to the Congress at the national level remains to be seen.
May 13 is historically significant for the grand old party as it is on this day in 2004 that the Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi, handed over a shock defeat to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the entire BJP, which had advanced the Lok Sabha elections by six months hoping that its ‘India Shining’ campaign will do wonders for the saffron party.
About 19 years later, Karnataka has once again come as a ray of hope for an embattled Congress that has suffered two back-to-back electoral defeats at the national level in 2014 and 2019.
The state had in past twice come to the rescue of the Congress – first in 1978 when Indira Gandhi won from Chikmagalur a year after she was defeated by Janata Party’s Raj Narain from Rae Bareli post-Emergency, and then in 1999 when Sonia Gandhi defeated BJP’s Sushma Swaraj from Bellary to establish herself in Indian politics.
Will Karnataka prove third time for the Congress?
(Aurangzeb Naqshbandi is a senior journalist)
(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH)