CITY | Monday, October 26, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Inflation hitting Congress hard at roots
Sidharth Mishra
The celebrations in the Congress camp after a 3-0 victory in the last round of the Assembly polls have been muted. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, general secretary Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have refrained from making a public show of their happiness about the victory. It has been left to the party spokespersons Jayanti Natarajan and Manish Tiwari to score brownie points on the television.
Not many years back people talked of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee remaining perennially in gratitude to Sonia Gandhi as she failed to provide leadership to the Congress in the 1998 and 1999 polls to wrest the power back from the BJP-led NDA. The 1999 polls were quoted as an instance of positive vote, the people deciding to return a party to power.
The year 2009 has seen two rounds of elections — Lok Sabha poll in the summers and the Assembly poll in the autumn, where the people have been forced to vote for the Congress as the Opposition has failed to generate the requisite confidence in the voters. It’s a peculiar situation where the anger against the Government is getting neutralised by the distrust in the ability of the Opposition.
This trend first became visible during the 2008 Vidhan Sabha poll in the national Capital. Despite there being several factors against the Congress Government, the voters preferred to see Sheila Dikshit as Chief Minister for the third consecutive term than trust power to a jaded Vijay Kumar Malhotra.
The victory of the BJP in the bypoll for the Corporation and the Assembly seats, which followed the Lok Sabha poll, further reiterated the point. People are ready to register their anger against the Government for its inability to check rising prices of pulses and vegetables, spiralling power bills and such other issues which directly affect the family of the aam admi but are not ready to hand over power to the Opposition.
This indeed is a peculiar situation and the Congress can continue to make hay till the sun shines. But the day a credible leadership comes at the helm of the Opposition ranks, winning the turf back would become very difficult. All its claims of good governance, religious harmony, handling of extremely challenging Naxal and terror activities would go waste in face of the ever shooting prices of the essential commodities.
Though a few newspapers have been insistent of creating the atmosphere of the recession being on its way out, the fact remains that Diwali this year was bereft of trapping of a recovering economy. Though people have talked about Dhanteras this year registering highest-ever sale of gold, it cannot be taken as the sole parametre of the economy being in the recovery mode for two reasons.
First, the cost of gold too has increased by leaps and bounds and the figure of quantity sold would be closer to reality than the amount quoted by the newspapers. Second, gold is purchased by those in Dhanteras who are real moneyed. The increase in price doesn’t really deter them from maintaining their family legacy.
The aam admi, which includes the middle class, on the Dhanteras day does at best with the purchase of utensils. Ask the ordinary shopkeepers including the sweet-shop owners and they would tell you how bad the business has been this year. The festive enthusiasm among the people has just been missing.
A report in The Pioneer during the Haryana poll said there was one issue that has been a cause for concern in the neighbouring State of the national Capital — price rise. The issue of price rise is so important that there were not more than 100 members to listen to the speech of Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda at Fatehpuri Chowk of Panipat on the concluding day of the campaign, the report had said.
People looked fed up with false promises made time and again and they wanted that the sky-rocketing prices of commodities should be controlled. Subash Pal, a Congress supporter said in the report, “While development remains an issue in all the elections, we are fed up with promises made by the Congress regime that they will make sure that prices of essential goods are controlled. Do you not remember the Prime Minister’s speech that his Government will check the price rise in 100 days? We feel cheated by the aam admi’s party (Congress) after voting for them for the third time in last six years.”
Very telling comment! Why the Congress still managed to win Haryana has now been discussed to death. The BJP has completely been overtaken by the fratricidal faction fight. None in the party is looking beyond personal short-term gains. Haryana is the best example, where the party decided to shun a long-term partner for assuaging ego of a few in the leadership.
A BJP in Bhasmasoor mode has made the Congress complacent. It has added to its arrogance and it has failed to address the issues of the aam admi. The Prime Minister as the head of the Government has no connect with people. To his credit, he makes no pretensions of it too. It’s time the Congress addressed these issues for the BJP, one hopes, would not remain perennially in the self-destructive mode.
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