For Rahul, Rajasthan could be the biggest disaster

Select the best cricketers from the game’s history. Choose your favourite ground, frame your own rules and then make the stars play a one-woman team. What happens if the all-star team loses? Ask Rahul Gandhi. For Rahul Gandhi, losing Rajasthan to the BJP would not just a setback. It would be the biggest disaster of 2013. Rajasthan is the only state where his party put together a dream team, implemented the perfect poll formula, set the rules of the game and faced the weakest opposition. If defeated, Rahul can just scratch his stubble, throw out its stars, trash its game plan and start praying for 2014. Rajasthan’s election was different from the other three states in many ways. Unlike Delhi, it was a direct contest between the Congress and the BJP. And unlike Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the Congress was not the challenger but the incumbent. On paper, everything seemed perfect for the Congress. [caption id=“attachment_1266789” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  If the Congress wins, nobody would be able to stop Gehlot from taking oath yet again. AFP[/caption] One, there was absolutely no confusion over who is the boss in Rajasthan. Ashok Gehlot was the undisputed leader during the campaign. If the Congress wins, nobody would be able to stop him from taking oath yet again. Second, the entire Congress was fighting a common enemy. There was no nervous talk of somebody like a Digvijaya Singh being the BJP’s best friend. Though there were some differences between Gehlot and CP Joshi, Rahul made them sit together, bury their differences and hunt as a pair. Three, the BJP didn’t have much to say against the government. If there was an anti-incumbency mood, it was not against the state government. There was anger against UPA-II and caste-based opposition of Gehlot. But not many voters were unhappy with the performance of the government. Vasundhara Raje ran a spirited campaign for almost six months before the election. But the returns from the campaign remained negligible before Narendra Modi’s advent. Four, unrest within the BJP was simmering beneath the surface. Raje was the only one from the top brass in action. Others were either sulking or confined to their own constituencies. Five, the Congress had stolen the development agenda from the BJP by relentlessly talking about its projects and schemes. An oil refinery in Barmer, a Metro on wheels in Jaipur and a Metro on paper in Jodhpur were some of its biggest poll planks. Finally, there was Sonianomics. The Gehlot government spent more than Rs 5000 crore on populist measures like free medicines, free diagnostic tests and morepensions to the elderly. The Congress appeared a perfect object of desire for a voter. It was headed by a popular face, was high on development, had a populist agenda, ran a successful campaign and allowed everybody to dip its hand in the exchequer. Not one government in the recent history had gone to polls with so much going for it. If the Congress wins, despite exit polls predicting otherwise, be prepared to see the Rajasthan model become the norm in India. Rahul would merrily implement the winning formula everywhere possible. Leadership issues would be sorted out, unrest and dissent would be addressed and the Congress house would be put in order everywhere. The UPA government has rolled out many sops in the past; there would be a mad scramble to roll out more before the summer of 2014. Gehlot could be the best choice for the finance minister’s post for every desperate Congressman. You may not get the joke, but surely you would get the drift. But what if it loses Rajasthan? Since the election in Rajasthan is different from Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Chhattisgarh, the lessons for the Congress would also be different. In the other states, the blame would go to Shivraj Singh, Raman Singh and the AAP for keeping the Congress out. But in Rajasthan, the disaster would be home-made. It would reflect a colossal failure of its top leadership in Rajasthan and its folly in following a populist agenda that was not based on the real needs and aspirations of people. F for free would then acquire a different connotation in politics. It would then become the usual four-letter word. It would imply that there is nothing called a perfect plan in politics. Voters can accept your freebies, digest your free wheat, praise your chief minister but still reject a government. A defeat in Rajasthan would decisively prove that this election has become a referendum on the cult of a single man. And that man is not Rahul Gandhi. What the Rajasthan exit polls show According to an exit poll survey by CNN-IBN and The Week, Vasundhara Raje is all set to wrest the Chief Minister’s chair from Ashok Gehlot, and will do so very convincingly. The BJP is set to win a whopping 43 percent of the vote, as opposed to 33 percent of the vote garnered by the Congress party. In 2008, the Congress had won 37 percent of the vote share as compared to 34 percent for the BJP. The survey, which was conducted between 1 and 3 December, was conducted among 2976 respondents in 150 locations spread across 50 Assembly constituencies. The social profile of the respondents interviewed largely matched the demographic profile of the State. Women comprise 43.3 per cent of the sample. 18.2 percent of the sample consists of Scheduled Caste respondents, 13.6 per cent is made up of Scheduled Tribes and 16 percent is made up of Urban. According the exit poll survey a massive 49 percent said that they preferred Raje as Chief Minister as opposed to 27 percent for Gehlot. He led Raje only among Muslims and with a very narrow gap among SC voters. Most said that they voted because “I generally like the party/it has good leaders/it has a good programme”. But an interesting key factor was the popularity of Raje herself. A significant 9 percent said that their vote had been influenced by the fact that they liked Raje. This was even higher than caste considerations (7 percent) and a perceived ability to control price rise (8 percent). The survey further indicated that Raje’s popularity was in fact at an all time high of 49 percent. This is in comparison to 35 percent in 2009 and 39 percent in 2008. Also only around 3 percent of BJP voters said they had voted for the party because they ‘liked’ Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi fared a mere percentage point better. Four percent of Congress voters said that they had voted for the party because they liked Rahul Gandhi.