At education hub Kota, during one of the meetings that he held with civil society organisations across the Bharat Jodo Yatra’s 15-day padyatra inside Rajasthan, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met Nitin Vijay, a renowned educationist from the region, known fondly as NV Sir. Vijay caught his eye, and Gandhi invited him to walk in the Yatra.
In the yatra, during a 90-minute interaction on the education sector, Gandhi told Vijay, “The problem is that we have district collectors, not producers. We are teaching our children to collect, not produce.” Gandhi’s observation, which has now gone viral across Congress’s social media platforms, lays bare a central idea that the former party president is unpacking as his Yatra moves from state to state: the route that the Grand Old Party now needs to embark upon.
As the Bharat Jodo Yatra enters its final stage, traversing over 3000 kilometres since it started at Kanyakumari in September, Gandhi’s push for an organisational transformation has found a footing. Gandhi’s message is simple – the Congress now has to move from chasing votes to highlighting voices that need to be heard.
Leaders that DH spoke to said that the Yatra has now reinvigorated the party, which has been struggling electorally for years, and some leaders even said that there is now a pre-Yatra and post-Yatra Congress. Whether that will translate to votes or not, remains to be seen, specially since Gandhi has said in as many words that, the votes don’t matter, people do. “Raise their voices and the votes will follow,” he has said.
While that might seem ambitious for a party which has been routed in state after state in the face of a calculated electoral push by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress leaders say that the behind the scenes movements are going to make a difference. Looking to replicate the success of the Yatra, the party is now going to undertake an outreach campaign starting Republic Day, where all the lawmakers of the country will be asked to go to their respective Parliamentary as well as Assembly constituencies over a period of two months. A meeting in this regard with state presidents has been called for at the party headquarters on January 23.
Gandhi’s insistence that the party’s leaders should walk among their constituents has been made public; this week in Alwar’s Malakhera, he asked the 30 ministers in the Gehlot Cabinet to walk across the state’s 33 districts. He said that the true situation of the party will be unhidden then. A leader part of the Yatra’s core team told DH that this suggestion to Rajasthan ministers was borne out of his own experience. “There is constant and instant feedbackl,” said the leader.
An AICC leader said that the two month outreach is to address this lack of interface with people. “This is the main thing that we’re lacking as a party. Regional parties are doing it successfully, and we are not able to compete with what they’re doing. RG has asked leaders to work as a regional party in their home states, and not think of Congress as a national party there,” the leader said.
Congress’s general secretary organisation KC Venugopal said that the “massive public contact programme” is unprecedented. “The Yatra has changed the working schedules of the party from the cadre to the leaders at the top. State leaders are now saying that these changes are being felt in their personal lifestyles. I see this as an organisational strengthening,” Venugopal said.
Leaders say that due to a constant feedback system owing to regular interactions, Gandhi has assessed the leaders who have put in the work, and those who haven’t. For instance, during his Rajasthan walk, Gandhi found a few panchayat chiefs who he thought could be given MLA tickets. In a similar vein, he told leaders in Rajasthan to not sell the policies of the past, but what this Congress will do. “He told us that what Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi did was great, but the focus needs to be on what’s new on offer,” a leader from Rajasthan said.
Congress workers arranging the Yatra’s logistics said that the conversations that he has with workers of the party are usually in their language, with an interpreter present, where sometimes he tells them to assess the ground situation. In fact, as the walk wraps up in each state, Gandhi sits for a discussion with the state’s leaders. In Alwar, it was a fireside chat with Gehlot, Sachin Pilot and Jitendra Singh Alwar, with some other leaders present.
For a party struggling in the face of the BJP’s onslaught on one hand, and the quick-footedness of regional parties on the other, the Congress’s newfound agility is yet to translate into electoral success. But one thing is apparent – the Grand Old Party has begun on a new walk.