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Rahul Gandhi enters poll scene in Bihar
September 21, 2015
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To begin with, Congress vice
president Rahul Gandhi’s so called pro-poor politics and photo-ops by sipping
tea at a Dalit’s hutment or staying a night on the rooftop of another poor
farmer’s, does not cut much ice with the poor in Bihar. On the contrary, he
does share some unpleasant memories of the state, which is placed second from
bottom on development scale in the country.
Much is still discussed about how
Rahul was heckled by the students during an interaction with the students of
Lalit Narayan Mithila university in Darbhanga five years ago (November 2010)
and had to be escorted out of the venue as the students booed him for his faux
passé that the students would have to change Gujarat (instead of Bihar) if they
wanted to change India. The students had asked him to explain the treatment
meted out to Biharis in Congress-ruled Maharashtra!
Things have not changed much in the
intervening five years except that Rahul is now a fallen prince and that the
National Democratic Alliance has taken over from the Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance at the Centre.
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In Bihar too, Rahul’s nightmare
continue as the Congress continues to be largely written off and is dependent
on the charisma of its allies – Janata Dal (United) leader and chief minister
Nitish Kumar, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo, Lalu Yadav. To add salt to
the wound, these two local satraps now don’t even consider Rahul their equal.
Consider how Nitish and Lalu skipped
Rahul’s very first public rally in West Champaran on September 19 – in the
region from where Mahatma Gandhi had started his freedom movement by holding an
agitation to free farmers from indigo farming forced by Britishers! While
Nitish did receive the Congress scion at the airport in Patna to excuse himself
thereafter on grounds that he was too busy in his preparations for the state
elections, it was Lalu who truly showed Rahul his place by making him share the
political space with his son, Tejaswi – a fresher in Bihar politics. In pure
Bihari term, it could well be like showing Rahul, his “aukaat” (position).
Indeed, Rahul is no more a
significant player in the power game that Nitish and Lalu play in their home
turf and this is a grim reality that Rahul needs to reconcile with. For the
scion of the Gandhi family, who was once a contender for the prime minister’s
post, it has been a mighty fall and he has no one else to blame. He was
conspicuously missing from the Mahagathbandhan’s “Swabhiman” rally at Patna’s
historic Gandhi Maidan on August 30 that was attended by his mother and
Congress president Sonia Gandhi along with Lalu and Nitish.
Lalu still nurses the grudge that
Rahul had rejected an ordinance in 2013 which could have provided protection to
the former from being disqualified from contesting elections after being
convicted in a fodder scam case. Now it is payback time for Lalu!
As it is, the Congress is a non-entity
in Bihar today. A series of poll reversals has to be blamed for this and that
too, at a time when the Congress-led UPA was at the helm at the Centre. In
February 2005 during a hung assembly, it could win only 10 of the 84 seats it
contested – a loss of four seats. Thereafter, in fresh elections same year in
October, its number further went down to 9. Even the number of seats that the
party contested had then gone down to 51.
Under Rahul’s command, the position
of Congress slumped further in Bihar as in 2010 state elections, it could get a
pitiable 4 seats even as it contested all 243 seats in the state. Rahul proved
a disaster for the Congress again in the 2014 general elections and his party
could win just 2 of the 40 Parliament seats from Bihar. Interestingly, of the
two winning candidates, Ranjeet Ranjan won in spite of the fact that Congress’
star campaigners, the mother-son duo of Sonia and Rahul, did not canvas for her
in Sapal. That still Ranjeet, wife of politician Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu
Yadav (who has now floated his own political outfit), could poll 332,927 votes,
showed she did not need a Sonia or Rahul for a win in her constituency!
The Congress slump continues. This
time all that the grand old party has managed for itself is a meagre 41 seats
to contest. Nitish and Lalu share 101 seats each after the Samajwadi Party and
Nationalist Congress Party walked out of the grand alliance or Mahagathbandhan
(of which Nitish, Lalu and Rahul are a part) over seat sharing.
It has become evidently obvious that
Rahul has little say in the Mahagathbandhan. So much so that the
Mahagathbandhan did not even slot Rahul’s rally as election rally right at the
mid of elections in Bihar and that the Congress had to simply yield stating the
public address was not specific to the Bihar election, but part of a
countrywide commemoration of Dr. B.R Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary! The
biggest irony was that even though the rally was meant to mark the birth
anniversary celebrations of Dalit icon Ambedkar, Rahul was not supposed to and
neither did he come out of the election mould. Snubbed by Lalu and Nitish, he
barely mentioned of the Mahagathbandhan, and did not at all mention Lalu and
Nitish — who is its chief ministerial candidate and face of the alliance — in his
23-minute speech.
What was remarkable though was the
way he chose to attack prime minister Narendra Modi and his “suit-boot ki
sarkar” during his entire 23-minute speech. He got engaged into a personality
clash with Modi and even call the prime minister names such as “feku”
(braggart). He slammed Modi for not fulfilling his pre-Lok Sabha elections
promises – “Prime Minister Modi promised two lakh jobs, promised Rs.15 lakh
deposit to each account and to reduce high prices. Did it happen? ‘Feku tha,
hai’ (He was a braggart and will remain one.”
Going by his speech, Rahul appears
positioning himself against Modi. A day later, his mother Sonia too, joined him
in Modi-bashing at a “Kisan Samman” rally in New Delhi – “…Farmers will not get
anything. Only his (Modi’s) friends will benefit…”
Positioning is crucial in politics.
After faring disastrously in elections since 2014, Sonia and Rahul do
desperately need to reposition their brand equity to remain in contention.
Hence, targeting the topmost opposition leader does make sense. But what if
even the regional satraps are unwilling to share space with them? Bihar
elections could well prove a litmus test for both Sonia and Rahul’s own
political relevance. This is how Rahul’s rally needs to be interpreted particularly
as it appears, Modi is succeeding in enforcing his goal of a “Congress free
India”.
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