Not 'I' but 'we': Congress drops pride from politics, makes modesty ally

Subtle changes in its strategy for opposition parties could ease uniting efforts

Gone is the swagger, the chest-thumping, the preening. Out of the red now and back in the black after stellar victories in three state elections, including a spectacular showing in Chhattisgarh, the Congress is embracing the win with sober grace, conscious that it can’t defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on its own in 2019 and it needs alliance partners. And to get alliance partners, it has to win their confidence and take their interests into consideration.

This was most aptly illustrated by Sanjay Jha, party spokesman. “The mahagathbandhan (grand coalition) is a work in progress; it is going to be a reality,” Jha said. Referring to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the Congress until 2014, he added: “In the 10 years of a coalition government, we had better GDP growth and a very stable society. The myth that majority governments provide better governance has been totally disproved.”

A coalition government, dominated and dictated by the Congress, he forgot to add.

But is that changing? All the evidence suggests it is.

Getting off from  its high horse

In Madhya Pradesh, few know the crucial role played by former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh, who was seemingly treated as an outcast by the Congress through the campaign but was very much in the game.

It was Singh who first spotted the leadership talent of Hiralal Alava. Alava, a doctor in New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), started the Jai Adivasi Yuva Shakti Sangathan (JAYAS) just a year ago. It was initially an NGO/pressure group but swiftly became more ambitious as Adivasi (tribal) candidates sponsored and backed by the JAYAS contested and won every student union election in the Malwa region, dominated by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Assembly election result tells us the backstory — the massive shift of the Adivasis from supporting the BJP to opposing it. In the Malwa Nimar and Gwalior Chambal regions, Adivasis have had a strong presence. Alava galvanised them and turned them away from the BJP towards the JAYAS.

But he neither had a symbol, nor a party structure, nor the resources to fight elections. Anxious not to lose the control and momentum of the movement he had almost singlehandedly created, Alava reached out to Chandrashekhar ‘Ravan’, another parallel Dalit-tribal leader with a presence in both Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, for help.

Singh reached out to Alava, held his hand and persuaded him to recalibrate his plans. The Congress offered him its unconditional support, gave him an Assembly seat (he says his colleagues in the movement were also offered seats but there is no evidence they got any) and gave him the Manavar seat. He wanted 70. He contested and won one on the Congress ticket and symbol. But his influence helped the Congress to wrest the tribals away from the BJP. This secured an unprecedented victory for the party in a region that sends 66 seats to the 230-member Assembly. This time the Congress’s tally was 35, while the BJP’s seats halved from the 56 it won last time.

All this was made possible because the Congress recognised the strength of a small party, gave it respect and recognition and conducted negotiations with it as an equal.

Inclusion and consolidation

These are the two words the Congress keeps using. But smaller alliance partners have a healthy suspicion about the party’s true intentions: Will it just use them to secure power in electoral transactionalism? Besides, many of the smaller parties that dot the landscape today are headed by former Congressmen, who found their growth and development stymied by the Congress and had to leave to survive in politics — like Ajit Jogi in Chhattisgarh.

But this election marks a change. The party leadership in the three states was apparently given a carte blanche to reach out to rebel leaders. Accordingly, although the Congress has managed a majority in Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot contacted rebels with an “all is forgotten/forgiven, return home” message.

The Congress is using a similar strategy of self-abnegation in its dealings with other parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP). Neither attended the Opposition's unity meeting last week. When asked about this, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said: “This is a process. As you can see, this process is bringing together everybody and this process is going to be carried out in an open, friendly and respectful manner. The voices in this room are the voices of the Opposition in the country and we respect every single one of them, regardless of how big or small they are.’’

As mantras go, this is a pretty convincing one. And it is a far cry from the lament of a generation of traditional Congressmen like Pranab Mukherjee. At the Pachmarhi session of the Congress in 1998, the party, under the influence of leaders of similar persuasion, passed a resolution that said it saw coalition government as “a transient phase”. It also made it clear that it would consider coalitions “only when absolutely necessary, that too on agreed programmes that do not weaken the party or compromise its basic ideology”. By the time the party reached 2001, it was singing a different tune. “We are accepting the idea of a coalition as a bitter pill,” is how veteran K Karunakaran described the resolution passed at the Bangalore session of the party, which said that the party “in the present political scenario, would be prepared to enter into appropriate electoral or coalition arrangements on the basis of mutual understanding without compromising its basic ideology”.

Whether the Congress will succeed in forging a broad opposition unity, even if only to stem the rise and growth of the BJP, is another matter. The fact is, it is sending signals that it is ready to swallow its pride and allow others to grow, even if it is at its own expense. This can’t be easy.