Rethinking Opposition: What Congress & Others Must Do Before 2019

Instead of building a national grand alliance, the Opposition can build strong local leadership to counter BJP.

While watching one of the prime-time debates on Bihar last week, a phrase used by someone got stuck in mind. From ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ we are heading towards ‘Opposition Mukt Bharat’!

A democracy without opposition is the top of the slippery slope towards authoritarianism, about which there is no doubt! Like, Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan’s iconic film The Dark Knight says – this is too much power, for any one person!

So who brought us here?

The disconnect I have with those raising the spectre of opposition-less democracy is this – their expectation always seems to be, now that the BJP juggernaut has gathered tremendous momentum and it is flattening everything in its way, a few ‘conscientious’ followers of BJP should switch allegiances, just to keep things balanced!

This is a ludicrous expectation and the underlying assumption that the supporters of Modi/BJP need to accept they were wrong is not a realistic one.

Countering BJP Juggernaut

• By praising Nitish Kumar for his fight against corruption, Modi shifts goalpost for 2019 to anti-corruption
  
• Economic distress likely to cause more discontent among voters than nearly non-existent Hindutva terror
  
• BJP leaders have toed a politically correct line on mandir and other issues, even at the cost of upsetting a section of their voter base
  
• The Opposition would do well to try a similar strategy with respect to cultural issues
  
• Instead of stitching a grand alliance, the Opposition can take a cue from AAP in Delhi and Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra who’ve put a strong fight against BJP
  

Corruption, An Electoral Issue

To start with, by praising Nitish Kumar for his fight against corruption, PM Narendra Modi has shrewdly shifted the goalpost in 2019 to that of anti-corruption. This ability to define the narrative has traditionally been a Left stronghold.

Now that BJP has learnt to do the same, the Opposition too needs to acknowledge that secularism is no longer a viable platform to build anti-incumbency.

Economic distress is a far more fertile ground to sow the seeds of discontent in the minds of voters, than the bogeyman of nearly non-existent Hindutva terror. The academics and media personnel sympathetic to leftist issues have repeatedly made an effort to separate Hindutva from Hinduism and they don’t have much to show in terms of results.

Also Read: The Three Mistakes Of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s Political Life

Cultural War

I wrote a few months ago about the pitfalls of cultural war and how the Opposition needs to abandon it if they want to take on the government on issues of policy and economy. Since then, the cultural war, if anything, has intensified.

Last week, while the Opposition was busy discussing tanks in universities and signboards in Bangalore Metro, the rug was pulled from under their feet in one of those states where they had managed to defeat BJP comprehensively.

There may not be a direct relation between the way events unfolded in case of Bihar, JNU, or Karnataka language row, but when the Opposition’s leadership is concerned about the imposition of Hindi, why doesn’t it bother about keeping the RJD-JDU-INC alliance alive in Bihar.

And that brings me to the most important aspect where the BJP leadership is faring far better than the Opposition.

If you take stock of noise across social media about the controversial Right to Education Act or the Ram Mandir issue, BJP leaders have largely toed a politically correct line, even at the cost of upsetting a vocal section among their respective support base.

This looks like the two bites of an apple strategy, where the party gets to put forth right-leaning opinion and yet the elected representatives can deny the same where it matters. The Opposition would do well to try a similar strategy with respect to cultural issues.

Also Read: How Hindi Got Caught in Karnataka’s Linguistic Crossfire

Grand Alliance: No Magic Formula

I also think the Opposition needs to learn lessons from appropriate victories rather than the biggest win. Just because stitching an anti-BJP alliance worked in Bihar, it was touted as a formula to stop Modi in 2019.

Now that this experiment has failed, the Opposition needs to study examples like AAP’s victory in Delhi assembly or Uddhav Thackeray putting up a fight against BJP’s electoral machinery in Maharashtra. Both the cases involved no grand alliance.

In military terms, these are guerrilla warfare wins, where on a limited territory the winners managed to isolate and defeat BJP. Mamata Banerjee in Bengal perhaps also belongs to the same category.

It may not be such a bad idea for the Opposition to think small/local as its theme for 2019, rather than stitching together desperate and disparate alliances with ‘Stop Modi’ as the only common theme.

That would mean BJP’s absolute power in the parliament might go up even if they retain the same number of seats (on account of a fractured opposition), but that will also make it difficult for BJP to neutralise this kind of opposition.

As any wildlife hunter will tell you, animals with a distributed central nervous system are harder to bring down.

Also Read: In Bihar, Congress Lost a Friend, the Government & Realignment

Congress Needs to Re-Strategise

The Grand Old Party of India needs to rethink its role and future course of action. As the drama over Ahmed Patel’s re-election in RS shows, Congress’ part-time dynastic style of leadership is no match for Modi-Shah’s relentless, take no prisoners 24*7 style.

With one in five voters still voting for the INC, the party will probably remain the fulcrum of the Opposition, but in the 2019-2024 session of parliament the Congress would do well to relinquish its ‘de-facto opposition’ role and spend time building grassroot-level support and rethink its relationship with the Gandhi dynasty.

Also, if the party hopes to maintain a national image, it needs to rein in state-level leadership in Karnataka whose anti-Hindi rhetoric might cost the party at national level. This is a lose-lose proposition, where even if the Congress manages to retain Karnataka, it is giving readymade ammunition to BJP to hurt them big in the general elections the next year.

Contrast this with how BJP has steadfastly kept itself away from alliance partner Shiv Sena’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and you might realise how the defeats in the last four odd years have actually affected Congress’ strategic vision. The party needs to get together some of its best thinkers with experience in electoral politics and go back to the drawing board.

Time is not on their side!

Also Read: Opposition Weak After Prez Polls, But Will Have to Unite by 2019

(The writer is an investment professional, author and stand-up comedian. He can be reached @freentglty. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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