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Over the weeks that followed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's political realignment , one question that has been repeatedly asked in political circles is this: has the Opposition's challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 2019 crumbled even before it could take off?
The answer depends on where one stands within the political divide . The Rashtriya Janata Dal, which, along with the Congress, shared power with Mr. Kumar, called it "deceit" and used the episode to add to India's political vocabulary.
The official twitter handle of Lalu Prasad Yadav's party retweeted a supporter's tweet saying they had been "Nitished." The word was used as the English translation of the Hindi word "dhoka" or "deceive".
नीतीश कुमार, क़फ़न में जेब नहीं होती लेकिन कुकर्मों का दाग़ ज़रूर होता है। जनता और मालिक सबके सब कर्मों का लेखा-जोखा रखते है। धीरज रखिए
— Lalu Prasad Yadav (@laluprasadrjd) July 27, 2017
The Congress called it a "betrayal of people's mandate". Mr. Kumar declared Prime Minister Modi's to be invincible, claiming that there was no leader in the Opposition ranks to take on Mr. Modi.
With Mr. Kumar now back in the NDA fold, it is perhaps expected. But is he articulating a reality that most Opposition leaders themselves know?
Leadership conundrum
The biggest challenge, perhaps, is to find an Opposition leader who is acceptable to all, can bring together all shades of opinion and manage their contradictions. Within the Opposition ranks, there are plenty of mass leaders — from Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav in the North to Mamata Banerjee in the East — but none meets all these requirements.
The Congress party, with its pan-India presence, could have taken the lead. But first, it must settle important issues within.
Rahul Gandhi taking over as the Congress President has been in the works for three years now. The trust deficit between the party's Old Guard and Congress's generation-next is yet to be bridged.
Organisational weaknesses
In the past three years, since the party suffered its worst electoral defeat, it is yet to carry out a complete revamp. Mr. Gandhi has, for long, talked about bringing in new faces who could gain from the experience of the senior lot but this plan is yet to take off.
Barring Rajasthan, where Sachin Pilot finds himself sufficiently well-entrenched to take on the BJP, there is hardly any State in the Hindi Belt where the Congress can put up an effective challenge to the ruling party.
There is anti-incumbency in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh but there are doubts about the Congress's ability to take advantage of it. The question of whom the Congress party will be led by in next year's election is a tricky one as the loyalties of party workers in the State are divided among Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh.
Former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi and his son Amit Jogi may have left the party, but factionalism within the Chhattisgarh Congress refuses to follow suit. The State doesn't have a single leader with any national recall. Nor do States like Jharkhand, Bihar or even Odisha, for that matter.
Factional fights and the inability of the Congress party to project strong leadership in these States only creates confusion among the workers.
Confused Narrative?
But that's not the only confusion the Opposition parties are dealing with. They seem to be confused about their own political narrative too. Take, for example, the midnight launch of Goods and Services Tax . The Congress party chose, after having claimed to have championed the case of one-nation-one-tax system, to stay away from the formal midnight launch where former Primer Minister Manmohan Singh was invited to be part of the dais. The Congress wanted others in the Opposition to stay away as well but none followed their diktat except the Left and Trinamool.
The imminent reshuffle of Prime Minister Modi's Cabinet will certainly be an attempt to address some of the challenges the ruling party faces. Many in the Opposition ranks also know that they have plenty of issues that can help them connect with people on the ground.
Again, when the Supreme Court passed the landmark judgement abolishing the practice of 'triple talaq', the Congress and the Left parties welcomed it as a case of gender justice. But parties like the Trinamool and Samajwadi party were eloquent in their silence.
Confusing signals were sent even from the Lalu Prasad Yadav's mega Patna rally that was meant to take on the BJP and Nitish. Mamata Banerjee's presence ensured that Communist Party of India (Marxist) general-secretary Sitaram Yechury gave it a miss. Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati was not to be seen while Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav was on stage. Clearly, to borrow Mr. Yechury's words, "the index of Opposition unity" was rather low.
But more importantly, the Opposition had failed to provide a cogent alternative to the ruling party's narrative.
Fightback strategy?The ruling party can hardly be faulted if it claims the Opposition’s 2019 challenge is a non-starter. But the ruling party hasn't made any such assertion as political parties know know that winning a popular election is never an easy task.
The imminent reshuffle of Prime Minister Modi's Cabinet will certainly be an attempt to address some of the challenges the ruling party faces. Many in the Opposition ranks also know that they have plenty of issues that can help them connect with people on the ground.
Former Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, in a recent newspaper column , mentioned a few of them. Farmers’ unrest from Tamil Nadu to Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, slow industrial production, not enough jobs in the market or simply losing the existing ones post demonetisation, Mr. Tewari argued, were issues people are angry about.
He said an able leader would act as a “lightning rod who would crystallise this anger” in the next 12 months and pose an effective challenge to the Modi regime. Mr. Tewari cited the example of 2004 when the Vajpayee government’s campaign of India Shining simply didn't resonate with the voters. The Congress — and, perhaps, the entire Opposition — is certainly hoping for a repeat but for that there should be a greater sense of urgency.
As the saying goes, a week is a long time in politics; for the Opposition, 12 months could be an eternity.
