Coronavirus pandemic propels Congress into public discourse

The Congress, which was down in the dumps after two successive Lok Sabha poll debacles and battling a leadership crisis, has suddenly found a voice in the public discourse in the last two months of the COVID-19 crisis.

While Priyanka Gandhi’s politically potent move of arranging 1,000 buses to ferry migrants stuck in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh where she is nurturing the party for 2022 Assembly got the party relentless television media coverage for the last two days, the Youth Congress sought to reinforce Rahul Gandhi’s 2019 Lok Sabha poll manifesto promise of NYAY by demanding from the Centre to implement the scheme’s provisions for at least six months for the unprivileged people battling a crisis of life and livelihood.

In fact, from the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the Congress has been aggressively trying to put the central government on the mat questioning its counter-strategy of the pandemic and alleged delay in responses.

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Way back in the second week of February Rahul Gandhi said that while the Corona Virus is an extremely serious threat to people and the economy of the country, his sense is that the government is not taking this threat seriously even as timely action is critical.

After the surge in cases even after four lockdowns, Congress is now training guns on the government reminding them that despite Gandhi having said this 40 days before the government announced the first lockdown on March 24, Centre has not been able to put effective strategy in place.

Alleging a massive mess in migrant management, Congress units began the move to pay the train fare of migrants at the direction of Sonia Gandhi in the first week of May. Soon the Congress workers started lining up outside railway stations to buy tickets for migrants and Congress sympathisers inundated social media with video clips of the exercise. Centre dismissed Sonia’s move as “show”.

In Uttar Pradesh which sends 80 Lok Sabha MPs and which has given maximum Prime Ministers to the country, Congress has given the command in the hands of Priyanka Gandhi to revive the moribund veins of the party, which is out of power in the state for last 20 years.

A careful reading of the Twitter timelines of both Priyanka and Rahul bear it out that the Congress has not left a single opportunity to put the BJP governments at Centre and in UP in the dock over the handling of the pandemic and in particular the emotive issue of the migrant management. Congress is making a serious bid for revival in its fortune in 2020 state polls.

In states like Bihar, where Congress is totally dependent on allies, it has lent its weight behind regional parties like RJD, which repeatedly targeted the NDA government headed by Nitish Kumar there. The party also lapped up with alacrity the cry of some regional parties like Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress that federal structure is not being respected by the Modi government to create a semblance of Opposition unity.

The party which was in a total disarray after Rahul Gandhi having quit the party chief post last year and her mother Sonia Gandhi reluctant to continue the interim arrangement of her heading the party again for long, has managed to resonate as a political force during the pandemic as suddenly the issue of the internal crisis of the party and the leadership dispute on the old guard versus new generation seems to have got muted with leaders of all genres in the making common cause on the pandemic response of the Congress. With youths having lost jobs across sectors and economy in a tailspin, the party has got issues to put the government in dock and it is making full use of that.