Modiphobia: To recover, Cong has to go beyond boycotting PM's functions

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, all her chief ministers and her office-bearers all need to go and re-watch Ramesh Sippy’s blockbuster Sholay with its iconic one-liner Jo darr gaya, samjho mar gaya (He who is afraid, is dead). Instead of fighting back or as one leader suggested, paying the BJP back in its own coin by renting a crowd, the 129-year old party has allowed itself to be almost paralysed by a fear factor that goes by the name of Narendra Modi. In its latest evidence of this, the party has advised its chief ministers not to share the dais with the new Prime Minister after what he did to its satraps. Accordingly, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan decided to keep away from Modi’s function which involved a bhoomi pujan of a Metro project at Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital. [caption id=“attachment_1675151” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Congress needs a better plan to beat the BJP: Reuters[/caption] Chavan had a bitter experience earlier when at Solapur he shared the dais with the prime minister at the inauguration of the 765KV Solapur-Raichur transmission line and the four-laned Pune-Solapur section of National Highway 9 . The chief minister had to cut short his speech marred by crowds walking out or renting the air with pro-Modi slogans. “What happened at Solapur was unfortunate… We have taken a decision to skip the function at Nagpur,” Chavan was quoted saying, as he alleged that the country’s federal structure has been undermined at the programmes organized in Congress-ruled states. A similar scene was enacted in Haryana during the foundation stone laying function of a highway project in Kaithal on 19 August. When the two-term Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda stood up to speak, he was hooted and greeted with anti-Congress slogans that contrasted with the rousing pro-Modi chants. Not surprisingly, a fuming Hooda vowed that once was more than enough and he would not share the stage with Modi again. Reality check or a design? Sources indicated that Sonia has been briefed about the humiliation meted out to her chief ministers and the manipulation of an official function into a political event. Still traumatised after the electoral debacle it suffered at the hands of the Modi-led BJP campaign, the Congress reacted angrily at the manner in which its chief ministers were treated. It read a ‘design’ and ‘conspiracy’ behind the hooting, alleged that the gathering was stuffed with BJP supporters, advised its chief ministers to follow the minimum protocol required during the prime minister’s visit and as far as possible to avoid sharing the stage with him. The Congress is in power in 11 states, five of them in the North-East. Besides Maharashtra and Haryana which it rules, it is also part of the government in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand where elections are to be held later this year. The party also tried to use the occasion to reach out to other opposition parties by asserting that no self-respecting opposition chief minister should attend the ‘political functions’ of the prime minister. “There is a political design behind this. The prime minister has visited poll-bound states….It’s not only about Congress chief ministers. All self-respecting chief ministers of the Opposition should avoid political functions of Modi, which are being held in the name of public functions,” AICC general secretary in-charge for Haryana, Shakeel Ahmed, said. Not surprisingly, the BJP has flatly denied the charge that the programmes were electorally motivated or manipulated. Instead, it claimed, that the crowds were delivering a reality check and the Congress needed to recognise that the popular ire that reflected itself in the general elections continues to run high against it, including in states where it is in power. The Congress has been in power for 10 years in Haryana and for 15 in Maharashtra and faces a drag of heavy incumbency. “Our government respects all chief ministers - be it ours or of other parties. When the prime minister goes somewhere, the chief minister sits next to him… But if the people are angry with the CMs, what can the government do about it. The situation in Maharashtra and Haryana is such that the chief ministers are not ready to face the public. When public asks questions from them, they demand answers. Haryana public seems angry with Hooda and that is not our fault. Hooda should introspect," BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said. Boycott vs fight back But the moot question is whether a boycott the best strategy for the occasion? And does the party have only this strategy to fight Modi and the BJP? Staying away from the PM’s function is but a short-term tactic to convey its anger, frustration or protest. More so, since even if it were true that the PM’s official functions which chief ministers are expected to attend had turned into a political jamboree, there is nothing concrete to show that that the slogan shouting was engineered by the prime minister in his programmes in the poll-bound states where the Congress is fighting with its back to the wall. Many would believe that it is still too early for the pro-Modi and the anti-Congress sentiment that dominated the Lok Sabha polls to subside. Just as Modi needs to walk the extra mile to ensure that the sanctity of official functions is maintained, the Congress too has to come to grips with reality and realize that if has to fight the BJP it has to go beyond boycotting the prime minister’s function. But much the fault for this lies with the Congress itself. The results of the general elections were out on 16 May but the party has continued to wallow in the aftermath of the shock defeat that left it with only 44 Lok Sabha seats and without a post to stand on. The BJP-NDA preferred to give the deputy speaker’s post to the AIADMK, viewed as a friendly opposition party given the rapport that Modi and J Jayalalithaa share. Its poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections robbed it of the position of Leader of Opposition. Scouring for a facesaver, the party petitioned, threatened and even begged Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to grant it that post without any success. This has left the party with little option but to walk the fire which it has been avoiding till now. “If the party has to revive itself, there is no substitute for ground level action and agitation to reconnect with the voters and the people at large", said a general secretary. His main worry was not that the party has been reduced to 44 seats, no matter how depressing that might be, but the debilitating effect that the leadership vacuum has left on the party which continues to flounder in confusion. In the last three months, the party has not given out any signal to its workers—let alone the voters—that it has drawn any lessons from its defeat. It is only recently that the Antony committee, which was tasked to go into the reasons for the debacle and the recommendations to fix the problem, submitted to Sonia, leaving it to her to decide whether, when or how to proceed on the matter. The first flicker of some activity came on Wednesday when the Mahila Congress organized a convention where Rahul broke his silence and Sonia tried to lift the workers out from their despondency by declaring that winning and losing elections were a part of political life but they should leave no stone unturned to restore the Congress to its “aan, baan, shaan” (honour, grandeur and glory). But if one swallow does not make a summer, one convention does not spell a fightback or a revival. Sonia and Rahul still have to walk a long and tortuous road ahead.