Gujarat 2022 seals India’s 2024 fate: Rahul’s dynastic Congress just can’t take on Modi’s meritocratic BJP

In his 2016 book, Democrats and Dissenters, historian Ramachandra Guha wrote that the Gandhis must quit politics for the good of the Congress, if not the nation. Coming out scathingly against Rahul Gandhi, he asserted that he “has neither energy, nor the heart, nor the brains… to be an effective political leader”. Guha continued, “For the Congress’ long-term future, therefore, it may be in its own best interests to open its top leadership to a wider talent pool.”

As the Congress delivers one of its worst electoral performances in Gujarat, struggling to win even 25 seats in the state where it had given a spirited fightback in the 2017 Assembly polls by getting 77 seats to the BJP’s 99, Guha seems to be vindicated again. Not just the victory — the BJP has made the habit of bucking the anti-incumbency trend in Gujarat, seventh time in a row — but the manner in which it has been achieved by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine makes one write an obituary for the grand old party.

Unlike in the past, when poll pundits would give the Congress a chance, this time the only thing that was debatable was the margin of victory for the ruling dispensation: Will the BJP break Madhavsinh Solanki’s 1985 record of 149 seats? As per initial reports, the BJP finds itself in the striking distance of breaching the 150 seat mark. And the Congress is all set to hit a new low; its previous lowest score was 33 seats!

For those Leftists hiding under the liberal garb and running virulent campaigns against the saffron party out of their sheer anti-Modism, Gujarat has always been there for the BJP for the taking. The reality, however, is different. The BJP, unlike its opponents, has been working on Gujarat 2022 since the results of the 2017 Assembly polls were out, more so since 2020 when it engineered several high-profile defections from the Congress. After the win in Uttar Pradesh, the party needed the Gujarat push for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The 2017 Assembly election was a reminder to the BJP, of the political ground slowly slipping under its feet. The Congress had managed to split the Patidar, Other Backward Class (OBC) and Dalit votes by using Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mewani, respectively. This led to the BJP tally falling down to two digits for the first time in two decades.

The BJP moved fastidiously to counter Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor, and Jignesh Mewani. The party arrested the anti-BJP Patidar movement by changing the state leadership midway — from Vinay Rupani to Bhupendra Patel. The Patel community, which once felt side-lined, again became a pillar of strength for the saffron party. One can sense the change in its fortunes from the fact that Hardik Patel, who had led an inspired campaign against the BJP in 2017, has now joined the saffron party! Alpesh Thakor too followed a similar path, though with a different outcome: He resigned as an MLA to join the BJP, but found himself side-lined after losing the by-election. As for Jignesh Mewani, he finds himself politically discredited with his alleged connections with radical Marxists and ‘Urban Naxals’.

The BJP also engineered a series of defections from the Congress, especially in the crucial Saurashtra region where the grand old party was seen to be making a perceptible headway. The Congress suffered almost two dozen defections, more of them since 2020. In 2022, as BJP wins big in the Saurashtra region, it also needs to send a big ‘thank you’ note to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which seems to have made inroads into the regions, especially in Congress’ rural and tribal votes.

Congress surrenders before fighting

While the BJP works 24x7, the Congress leadership gives the impression of being reluctant politicians, used to working in a corporate 9x5 job, five days a week, with fixed annual holidays in exotic, foreign locations. It wakes up to elections a few months before the campaigning kicks in. All this while, the party is mostly cut-off from the masses, appearing to be in a hibernation-like mode. As for Gujarat, one can sense the lack of imagination in the Congress from the fact that in the election season, Rahul Gandhi, its star campaigner, chooses to keep Gujarat out of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Interestingly, Gujarat is the land of Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel, the icons of national unity and integration.

Though the Congress’ decent show in Himachal Pradesh would be a face-saver, especially for the Gandhis (Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra was running the campaign in the state), it should realise that the era of part-time politicians is over. This style of politics would have worked in the pre-Narendra Modi-Amit Shah phase, but these two politicians have changed the nature of politics and elections in India. The BJP, under the Modi-Shah leadership, is perennially in an election mode. This explains why the party went into a damage control mode in Gujarat soon after the 2017 polls. It could thus catch the Congress off guard.

The Congress would need to change its dynastic DNA to take on the BJP. It needs to shun the politics of entitlement that makes its top leadership unaccountable for the party’s performances. While Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and JP Nadda are self-made politicians who rose through the ranks of the party through sheer hard work, the Gandhis — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra — owed their power to their illustrious surname, which was allegedly appropriated by the Parsi husband of Mrs Indira Gandhi on Jawaharlal Nehru’s advice.

The problem isn’t the Congress. The problem is the dynasty. It brings in with its entitlement politics, leading to a sense of reckless elitism as well as ideological opportunism. It’s this elitism that made John Elliot write in his 2014 book, Implosion: India’s Tryst with Reality, “The country would have been better off without them (Gandhis)”. Elliot continued, “These dynasties have provided what should have been transitional leadership as their countries have developed political systems to replace colonial rule. Yet, while they have helped build or restore democracy at some stage of their history, they have thwarted the emergence of other leaders and new ideas.” No wonder, veteran BBC journalist Mark Tully, in his book No Full Stops in India (1991), compared the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty with “a banyan tree” under which “nothing grows”.

As for the Gandhis’ ideological opportunism, one just needs to look at Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra: He met and was seen nodding his head as a Christian priest talked nasty things about Hindus and Hinduism, while at the same time pursuing “temple runs” across the country to vindicate his “janeudhari” Brahminhood (in 2017, he visited 27 temples, and statistically, the party won 18 of those seats). One can see his ideological fluidity when his innate libertarian values don’t stop him from inviting hijab-wearing girls to join his Yatra, especially at a time when anti-hijab protesters are being killed\jailed in Iran!

The Gujarat results have shown the rise of the AAP in Gujarat, mostly at the cost of the Congress. This is bad news for Rahul & Co, though they may take solace from the Congress’ good performance in Himachal Pradesh. According to political scientist Suhas Palshikar, when the Congress “loses a state, it rarely recovers there” (Economic and Political Weekly). This is the case especially when the Congress is not the only political party in contention for power with the BJP. This has happened in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the past, and in Delhi and Punjab very recently. If the Congress loses its vote-share to the AAP in Gujarat, where it was in contention for power all these decades, it would mean the end of the future of the party in that state.

AAP’s an X factor but…

As for the AAP, there’s no doubt that it has caught the imagination of a section of Gujaratis, especially in the tribal, rural belt. In 2022, the AAP helped the BJP reach a new high by eating into Congress votes. But given the nature of the BJP leadership, it must have started preparing for the new challenger. Rajdeep Sardesai writes in his book, 2014: The Election That Changed India, how before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls Amit Shah was concerned about the AAP phenomenon. Sardesai quoted him as saying, “We cannot take them lightly, their popularity is rising across urban India. Even in UP, people are talking about them.” Maybe the presence of the AAP in this election made the BJP walk the extra mile to push its cadre to get more voters to polling stations.

But then the AAP seems to be following the Congress footsteps. Its ideological moorings remain highly flexible, if not fluid. The party as of today is Kejriwal, and Kejriwal is the party. What he decides becomes the policy of the party. This may work in a semi-state like Delhi where most of the responsibilities are carried out by the Centre, and for civic mess, it could blame the MCD run by the BJP. But with the BJP losing the MCD after 15 years to the AAP, even though narrowly, the AAP’s blame game scope has shrunk significantly in the national Capital too. And in a full-fledged state like Punjab, distressing signs are already visible.

Kejriwal is the X factor in Gujarat 2022. But India 2024 may be too early for him to make any significant presence. He would be targeting 2029. But then the big question is: Does he have the patience to play the waiting game? And more importantly, will he be able to resist his temptation to play everything for everyone, as Rahul Gandhi has been doing all this while. These questions may decide the fate of the AAP and the Congress, but the two Assembly results in 2022 — first in Uttar Pradesh and now in Gujarat — have almost sealed India’s 2024 fate. But then one never knows. A year and a half is a long time in politics. More so, Indian politics!

The author is Opinion Editor, Firstpost and News18. He tweets from @Utpal_Kumar1. Views expressed are personal.

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