advertisement
With the mantra – 'Don't fear... Fear causes hatred' – Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra headed for Ujjain on the seventh day of its journey in Madhya Pradesh.
Over the last one week, the crowds have been pouring in, with people looking visibly enthused. But can the yatra give Rahul Gandhi a makeover in the Hindi heartland? Here are five key takeaways from the Madhya Pradesh leg of the ongoing march.
Since Wednesday, 23 November – the day the yatra started its Madhya Pradesh leg – Gandhi's focus has been primarily on the tribal and Dalit communities.
Routes were changed and halts were altered to ensure that the Congress leader made it to the birthplace of tribal leader 'Tantya Mama', in Barauda Ahir village in Khandwa district on Thursday, 24 November.
On Constitution Day (26 November), the yatra was well-timed to reach Mhow, Indore, the birthplace of Dr BR Ambedkar. Here, Gandhi's speech focussed on the oppression of Dalits.
Speaking to the public in Mhow, Rahul Gandhi alleged that the BJP-RSS duo have been trying to destroy the Constitution by 'stealth'. He further said:
Dalit and tribal communities together constitute around 36 percent of the total population in Madhya Pradesh. It's an established pattern that whoever wins their votes, makes the government in the state.
Madhya Pradesh is home to the highest tribal population in the country – and 47 Assembly seats are reserved for the tribal community. Their votes determine the winner in close to a third of Madhya Pradesh's 230 Assembly seats.
In 2003, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) overthrew the Congress, it won 37 out of the total 41 reserved seats. In 2008, however, delimitation increased the reserved tribal seats from 41 to 47 – and the BJP won in 31 seats.
In the successive election, in 2013, the BJP retained its total seat tally of 31, however, in 2018 it could only win 16 seats and lost the power to the Congress albeit for only 15 months.
According to experts The Quint spoke to, the yatra has so far had more impact on the party's cadre than voters and it has been "a much-needed morale booster" for them.
Another journalist-turned-political analyst, Deepak Tiwari, who is also the Regional Editor (Hindi) at the Global Investigative Journalism Network, told The Quint:
He further said that the cadre now has a "tangible memory" of its leader walking alongside them, talking to common people, eating, sleeping in their neighbourhood. "Rahul Gandhi's image of an elite politician is breaking away," he added.
Through the Yatra, the Congress seems to have worked on another aspect of Rahul Gandhi's image - the perception that he isn't "pro-Hindu enough".
Time and again the divide in the Congress' Madhya Pradesh unit has come to fore. There are multiple factions, multiple leaders and the centre of power also keeps shifting. The same became visible during the initial days of Rahul's yatra in MP.
Top leaders, including a prominent Dalit face from the party such as Sajjan Singh Verma, were missing from action, while smaller nuisance over food and crowd management gave glimpses of the internal divisions.
A party source who is part of the yatra told The Quint that the divide was clearly seen as soon as the yatra entered Madhya Pradesh. Though both the top leaders of the party in the state - Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh - presented a united front, their followers spilled the beans about the divide.
The 'Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi' narrative went against the latter most acutely in the Hindi heartland and Madhya Pradesh is no exception. The Congress could win just one seat in Madhya Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. But experts say that the Yatra has the potential to address this.
The youth turned up in large numbers at the Yatra and at Rahul Gandhi's public meeting in Indore, just to see him. The Congress had fared poorly among this demographic during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, despite getting a great deal of youth support during the Assembly elections only a few months earlier.
However, the journalist further added that the ball is now in the court of state leaders to capitalise on these emotions and strengthen their base ahead of the Assembly elections in 2023.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)
Published: undefined