Everyone acknowledges that Rahul Gandhi’s stature as a pan-India leader got considerably enhanced after he undertook the gruelling Bharat Jodo Yatra, walking 6,000-plus kilometres across India. It was his way of connecting with common folk and their travails caused by unprecedented economic distress. The Mood of the Nation survey report conducted by the India Today group soon after the Lok Sabha elections threw up some significant pointers. Rahul registered his best-ever popularity ranking, with 22% respondents believing him to be the best alternative to Narendra Modi, while the prime minister’s concurrent popularity dropped below 50% for the first time in the past decade.
However, one question raised by many was how Rahul’s growing popularity would benefit the Congress party in terms of galvanising its cadres at the grassroots. In fact, one key objective of the Yatra was to galvanise Congress cadres who were admittedly in disarray in many states. This is a strange paradox – the leader’s personal popularity is on the rise but the Congress organisation clearly lags behind in terms of supplementing the leader’s image makeover.
This problem presented itself in the Haryana elections where news reports were unanimous that Rahul was attracting huge crowds, many times more than Narendra Modi’s public meetings could garner even with the unlimited resources at BJP’s disposal.
In the Lok Sabha elections, too, Rahul Gandhi caught the imagination of the youth across large parts of North India.
No wonder the detailed surveys by the CSDS-Lokniti showed that Rahul had more popularity than Narendra Modi in Uttar Pradesh when an open ended question was asked as to who would they prefer as prime minister from the present lot of leaders. Rahul had 36% support as against Modi’s 34%. This came as a huge surprise to the BJP but it seemed to have been vindicated by BJP’s shocking performance in the UP Lok Sabha polls.
It is also apparent that Rahul’s popularity among the youth would have helped transfer significant votes to the INDIA alliance partners in UP.
But here is the odd paradox: Rahul’s enhanced popularity and stature may be helping his India alliance partners more than it has benefited the Congress. For instance, the Rahul-Akhilesh Yadav combine emerged as a decisive factor to upset the BJP’s applecart in the Lok Sabha polls; similarly, his popularity in Kerala also proved to be crucial in reviving many of the Congress allies in the state when a majority of voters who conventionally preferred the Left swung towards some of the Congress allies in the general elections. In Maharashtra, too, Rahul has proven to be an anchor for the largely faceless state Congress in the opposition front, Maha Vikas Aghadi.
Yet, the recent defeat of the Congress in the assembly polls of Haryana and the Jammu region strongly indicates that the party’s grassroots organisation is yet to fully rally behind its leader and make full use of Rahul’s new-found connection with India’s youth.
In Haryana, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, under whose leadership the Congress contested the state polls, failed to encash Rahul’s popularity, despite the fact that it had the potential to offset the Jat/non-Jat polarisation that eventually proved to be Achilles’ heel for the Congress. Rather, he remained complacent, reluctant to derive strength from the popularity of his party’s national face.
The party’s losses in the last Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan assembly polls had already served the All India Congress Committee a crude reminder that over-dependence on regional satraps like Kamal Nath, Bhupesh Baghel, or even Ashok Gehlot may backfire badly. Yet, the party refused to correct its strategy in Haryana and J&K.
Directionally, it is clear that Modi’s popularity is waning and Rahul’s is rising though on an all India basis, Rahul still lags. But in states like UP, Rahul has managed to close the gap completely.
What now needs to be watched is how the Congress party organisation works in sync with its leader to cash in on the latter’s rising popularity. By projecting Rahul as the party’s national leader, the Congress may not only embolden its pointed campaigns against the NDA government on issues like unemployment, price rise, and cronyism, but also come across as a unified house which can kickstart the party’s run as a credible national alternative in the eyes of people.
Rahul could very well prove to be the X factor that the Congress desperately needs at the moment. In any case, he is the most-accepted national face in the party and using his growing popularity among the youth across all castes and communities could be a better futuristic experiment than deploying fatigued and vapid strategies.
Here, the responsibility equally lies with Rahul to ensure the party works coherently under his leadership. For that, he needs to hold the baton tighter than before, and hold people to account by registering his presence much more firmly than earlier. He can’t shy away. Rather, he needs to involve himself in electioneering in more ways than one, and needs to realise that micro-management of polls can’t be BJP’s sole domain any more.
Many political observers feel this did not happen enough in Haryana. There is relief that in Maharashtra the NCP organisation under Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena under Uddhav Thackeray won’t make the mistakes the Congress made in Haryana.
The Congress also has a strong vote base in Maharashtra. Rahul Gandhi’s campaigning in the state may help both the Congress and India alliance partners. The Congress organisation needs to get its management act together if it doesn’t want to lose voters that typically sit on the fence till the last minute.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
