![INDIA Alliance Loses Steam](https://kashmirobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/India-Alliance-Meeting.jpg)
The India Alliance started with a bang but has lost its steam soon after it was created in July last, and Congress is squarely responsible for this. After winning a landslide in Karnataka, Congress expected to sweep the recent state elections and take a leadership position in the opposition alliance. In the process, it gave a short shrift to India block parties. What is more, it also went back on Rahul Gandhi’s uplifting Bharat Jodo message, letting soft Hindutva drive its political agenda. But results have cut the party down to its size, in fact, making it at par with the AAP. In North India, where the party now ruling is New Delhi and Punjab is stronger than the Congress.
Where do we go from here? Nowhere, if the alliance doesn’t get its act together. It is still far from seat-sharing, nor does it have an alternative narrative that can rival Hindutva, the software of a political campaign. It can’t act as a counterfeit BJP and expect to win as the Congress learnt to its dismay in Madhya Pradesh.
As things stand, Hindutva’s appeal remains fresh and it transcends failures of governance, so fighting the BJP juggernaut on the same turf would make little difference. Nor would highlighting the alleged poor governance or the lack of jobs, however, they may resonate with a substantial section of youth. Politics is largely about poetry, it is fleshed out by fiction. You should be able to transmit a certain sense of high to the targeted constituency. This is where the ideology comes in: it lends a larger meaningfulness to the lives of people by making them partake in a grand vision for the country, something that demand for jobs and welfare measures won’t.
The opposition so far lacks a cogent ideological response to Hindutva. Considering the overwhelming popularity of Hindutva, the India Alliance is shy of playing the secularism card, lest it work to the advantage of the BJP. Instead, the alliance has taken a recourse to the caste politics which it hopes to revive the social fault lines papered over by the majoritarianism. But as the recent five state elections have demonstrated, Caste Politics 2.0 has had little resonance on the ground. But this doesn’t mean that it won’t in the upcoming general election. Many blame the opposition for its inability to articulate caste discrimination in an idiom that makes the concerned caste groups relate to it.
That said, the opposition has little time to put its house in order. As of now, it is still grappling with technicalities of forming the alliance. There is no political strategy, narrative or a competing welfare programme in place. The promise of caste census still retains its appeal, but somehow the opposition has failed to get the message across to masses. So, if the caste politics has to have any fresh resonance, the opposition has to find a way to reinvent the message. And that too, without the adequate support of the media.
On paper, the opposition still seems to have a good chance to sneak from behind and come out on top. The India Alliance represents a diverse array of regional and national parties, which have historically been rivals but have set aside their differences for a common cause: to address the pressing issues affecting the country and challenge the BJP’s nationalist platform. Other than the Congress, the alliance boasts of some major regional parties and the leaders who command massive public following. Already, the opposition’s wins in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka have put some wind in the sails of political resistance to the BJP. It is true, some regional parties have done individually well for themselves in their respective states. For instance, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Nitish Kumar and Tejasvi Yadav in Bihar, Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi and Punjab. Akhilesh Yadav mustered a good showing in the last Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh. Besides, after losing Karnataka heavily to the Congress this year, the BJP has no presence in South India.
Should this state of affairs reflect in the parliament polls, the BJP could struggle to get to a majority. But then the elections in the country over the past decade have largely been about the overarching persona of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hindutva. And should the two factors come into play again, as looks likely, there is little that the opposition can do in the absence of a credible answer to both.
- Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer