Rahul’s day dawns

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Rahul’s day dawns

Wednesday, 12 December 2018 | Pioneer

Rahul’s day dawns

The Modi-Shah juggernaut of the BJP has been finally halted in its tracks, signaling the emergence of the Congress as a fighting force again

The Kaalchakra (wheel of time), philosophers tell us, never stays stationary. But this time, the electoral Kaalchakra stopped short of a complete revolution, although its direction was quite clear. The other significant trend emerging from the results of five State elections is that after a long time voters have given a less than decisive verdict in at least two States, in fact the two big States of the Hindi heartland which went to the polls. The so-called Hindi heartland States — Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan — have traditionally been the BJP’s powerhouse, along with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. These are the States that gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi the thunderous mandate to lead his party to an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha for the first time in 2014. The BJP’s crushing triumphs in the States also contributed to party president Amit Shah’s ascendancy as the Superman of poll battles and a modern-day Chanakya, whose election-winning strategies were deemed infallible. Whatever the final outcome the aura of the Modi-Shah combine’s electoral invincibility has been dented, perhaps, beyond repair.

Although the Congress is in a cheerful mood, it’s not yet time for partymen to proclaim “Three cheers for Rahul Gandhi”. The Grand Old Party has wrested Rajasthan, but just about. The trends are see-sawing in Madhya Pradesh with the Congress enjoying a slender lead and the feisty Shivraj Singh Chouhan almost negating anti-incumbency. The party can however congratulate itself for its sweep in Chhattisgarh where popular Chief Minister Raman Singh had to finally bite the dust. Since all the three major Hindi-speaking States were under the BJP’s control for 15 long years, it was widely expected that Narendra Modi’s apparently diminishing charisma and the adverse effects of demonetisation and hasty GST implementation, will open the gates for the Congress’s resounding triumph. But notwithstanding its remarkable revival, the Congress victory stopped short of being outstanding.

Nevertheless, these results mark the emergence of Rahul Gandhi as a leader of stature. He has shrugged off the badge of being a sorry failure — an image which has dogged him for many years. He is now poised to lead a rejuvenated Congress into the Kurukshetra of 2019 in the hope of coming to power in New Delhi after a longish gap. This time he led from the front, muddying his hands in the heat and dust of a grueling poll campaign and proved his leadership skills. The Congress will still need allies in most States and much will therefore depend on Rahul’s acceptability as leader of a grand alliance of non-BJP parties, something that has not been forthcoming so far. But his task is much easier now that his party has finally risen from the ashes showing capability to emerge as a spirited fighting force.

A review of the results will not be complete without complimenting the resilient leadership of Telangana Chief Minister and TRS chief, K Chandrasekhar Rao, who bucked anti-incumbency to spectacularly win his first election since the formation of separate Telangana for which he had relentlessly struggled. His pro-poor, populist schemes helped him ward off the challenge from the Mahakutami, led by the Congress and Chadrababu Naidu’s TDP. In Mizoram too, the Congress had to face rout at the hands of the powerful regional force, the MNF. In other words, it’s a real case of “you win some, you lose some”. Only that the BJP has not won any.

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