Is Rahul Gandhi ready to lead the Congress to victory in 2024?

The Congress leader has been on a charm offensive in recent months, but that might not be enough to topple the BJP.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi speaks during a public meeting in Kargil on August 25. The BJP’s recognition of him as a threat has the potential to shatter the “TINA” (there is no alternative) factor in 2024, something on which Modi’s invincibility as an executive has majorly relied. | Photo Credit: PTI

When Rahul Gandhi recently launched a frontal attack in Parliament on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failure to contain ethnic violence in Manipur—his first since his disqualification from the Lok Sabha was revoked by the Supreme Court on August 4—it was impossible for the Bharatiya Janata Party or its partners in prime-time TV to dismiss it as mere fulmination coming from a languid Opposition stable.

The political battle lines, or at least the optics of it, have swiftly changed since the formation of the 26-party INDIA alliance against Modi. They began to redraw when the 53-year-old Wayanad MP embarked on a pan-India march in September 2022, displaying ease in talking with a cross-section of people and undoing a decade of bad publicity that had rendered his image as that of an aloof and entitled politician.

A renewed interest in Rahul Gandhi is a reality. And ironically, the BJP has aided it. From his rushed conviction in a criminal defamation suit and disqualification as a Lok Sabha member, perceived widely as politically orchestrated, to trying to defame him with a “flying-kiss controversy” as soon as he addressed the Parliament on August 9, the BJP has handed him a useful asset in Indian politics that he hitherto lacked: victimhood.

Also, in trying to politically eliminate Rahul Gandhi, the BJP has unwittingly conveyed its fear of his brand of politics, with tough talk on crony capitalism and divisive nationalism. The BJP’s recognition of him as a threat has the potential to shatter the “TINA” (there is no alternative) factor in 2024, something on which Modi’s invincibility as an executive has majorly relied.

“Some days back I visited Manipur. Our Prime Minister did not go. He still has not gone. Because for him, Manipur is not a part of India,” Rahul Gandhi attempted to portray Modi as a standoffish politician, in a 30-minute speech during the monsoon session of Parliament. There was precision bombing on the BJP’s themes of national security and nationalism, as the Congress leader emphasised that “India is a voice. It is the voice of our people, the voice from the hearts of our people. You have murdered that voice. This means you have murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur.”

Outside Parliament, his team is working tirelessly to depict him as an accessible and affable, frontline opposition leader with synchronised public appearances with the less well-heeled citizens. In Madina village of Haryana’s Sonipat district, for instance, Rahul Gandhi was seen driving a tractor and rolling up his trousers as he strode into muddy fields to sow paddy saplings. He interacted with the farmers over issues of inflation and the slump in agricultural growth, and in a video story uploaded later on his YouTube channel, he averred: “If we listen to them (farmers), understand their point of view, many problems of the country can be solved.”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi having lunch with vegetable seller Rameshwar in New Delhi on August 14. The underlying objective behind his interactions with the public is undoubtedly aimed at fragmenting the present-day consolidation of the poor voters and the younger voters behind Narendra Modi. | Photo Credit: PTI

In Delhi, he visited a bike-repairing shop and lent his hand in fixing a two-wheeler. His patient listening to a vegetable seller, Rameshwar, on soaring tomato prices, as the two had lunch together at Gandhi’s place, went viral on social media. The underlying objective is undoubtedly aimed at fragmenting the present-day consolidation of the poor voters and the younger voters behind Modi, which has enabled his BJP to defeat the Congress in roughly 200 Lok Sabha seats where they have a head-on collision. In the 65 seats of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, for example, the BJP in the 2019 general election won 61, Congress three.

What the Congress needs

But is a repaired public profile of Rahul Gandhi and the Opposition coming together enough to capture power when the country goes to the hustings in 2024? No. To secure a turnaround in its fortunes, the Congress needs three things: One, a leadership role in the India alliance, which is presently inconceivable. Two, an attractive economic message that resonates with different sections of society. And three, assembling electorally significant social coalitions, particularly in states with a complex caste mosaic.

While it is prudent to avoid turning the 2024 elections into a clash of personalities between Modi and Rahul Gandhi, a national election cannot be approached as merely an aggregate of state elections, with a focus on addressing State-specific aspirations. The Congress campaign has to encompass a broader national message and showcase national leadership vis-a-vis important issues of governance, security, and foreign affairs to attract diverse voters, who have come to admire a powerful executive in command of his party and alliance partners.

Regarding controlling the levers of power of the India alliance, the Congress is cleverly creating that perception through nuanced optics. First, it had the opposition parties postpone their Patna meeting to June 23 to adjust to Rahul Gandhi’s schedule, who was, at that time, travelling abroad. There was also planned drum-beating in the media following the Bangalore meeting on July 18 to underscore that it was Rahul Gandhi who named the coalition as “INDIA” or the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.

The INDIA partners have given up projecting anyone from among their ranks as a potential prime ministerial candidate, which works to the Congress’ advantage. This is a departure from how things were earlier this year when regional satraps would not miss any opportunity to undermine Rahul Gandhi’s authority. In March, while addressing party members over the telephone in a program that was telecast live on several local news channels, Mamata Banerjee had said, “Rahul Gandhi is Modi’s biggest TRP.”

However, when it comes to narrative-setting, Rahul Gandhi is inconsistent and, purely from an electoral point of view, impractical. If the Congress has to exploit the twin issues of inflation and unemployment, it has to articulate a persuasive economic policy linked to people’s selfish interests. Only pointing out Narendra Modi’s failures will not translate the ignition of rage against an anaemic economy into the political desertion of the BJP.

In Karnataka, where the Congress did very well in the recent assembly elections, the party had focussed on economic populism, promising, among other things, 200 units of free power to every household, and that worked. But at the national level, Rahul Gandhi’s fixation on effecting an ideological turnaround in the masses makes his discourse look either vague or too lofty. It also hinders other important concerns, such as China’s incursions into Indian land, or the aspiration for the old pension scheme from getting widespread notice.

Unfinished business

Rahul Gandhi is yet to demonstrate a considerable level of political astuteness in trying to assemble an anti-Modi social coalition. In the Congress’s plenary held in February in Raipur, the party’s leadership pledged to focus on mobilising voters at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. But in practice, it has only parroted OBC-centric talking points of regional parties in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who ended Congress hegemony in the late 1980s by stitching an alliance between the intermediate castes and the minorities.

That model worked for the “Mandal parties” such as the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and what is now the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar because their leadership belonged to the dominant Yadav caste, and both states had a sizeable Muslim population that rooted for them. But for a national party like the Congress, emulating that model would be counterproductive in the rest of the Hindi heartland where it has neither the ready support of a dominant caste nor decisive Muslim votes.

A more prudent course would be to appeal to a wide range of discontented Modi voters, even if that means lacking definition on polarising issues such as the caste census and reservation. But Rahul Gandhi’s proclivity to open his heart out all the time is problematic. In a Karnataka rally in April, he seemed to be reading out the script of the Mandal parties when he demanded the caste census and lifting the cap of reservation from the current 50 per cent.

“Modi only speaks about OBCs, but will not release the data. Modi only wants OBC votes. But Congress soon after coming to power will do it,” he iterated. Ironically, when his party was in power, the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011 done under its aegis attracted criticism for its methodology, and its data was never released.

In any case, the OBC plank did not come to Akhilesh Yadav’s rescue in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in 2022 when the defection of powerful OBC leaders such as Swami Prasad Maurya, Dharam Singh Saini, and Om Prakash Rajbhar from the NDA failed to crystallise into a political insurrection against the BJP: a staggering 65 per cent of non-Yadav OBCs voted for the BJP, according to a CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey. If anything, it kindled memories of the historical incompatibility between the Dalits and the OBCs, and pushed a section of Dalits as well as the Brahmins, otherwise upset with Adityanath’s alleged “Thakur raj”, to stick with the BJP.

The Congress needs to recast itself as a viable and attractive platform for all kinds of disillusioned BJP voters and focus on fragmenting the BJP’s roughly 37 per cent vote share while holding onto its 19.5 per cent. For that, it needs a dream to sell. “Mohabbat ki dukan” is not that dream. It offers no elixir for people’s livelihood issues.