Diminishing returns of Rahul Gandhi’s yatra

Narratives today have a way of adapting to their context. They either become epic in scale with a grandeur of dignity, or shrink to the size of limerick. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) seems to share that fate.

As initially conceived, the BJY (from September 7, 2022, to January 30, 2023) was a brilliant invention, an experiment in understanding ground-level responses, and integrating them into the vision of the Congress. Gandhi’s BJY in that sense was a success.

Unfortunately, yatras as public narratives, have their own demands. The yatra if systematically used, becomes like a TV serial. It demands cameo roles, scripts, and new events. It needs surprise and a sense of anticipation. The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (BJNY) — which started on January 14, and is currently underway — seems flat-footed, and Gandhi looks absentminded.

Shrunk beyond comprehension

The situation becomes complicated when we locate Gandhi’s yatra within the context of the Opposition and the Congress. As an electoral supplement, the yatra is wearing thin. This is because the Opposition is losing its identity and becoming a set of quarrelling factions. Its idea of India has shrunk beyond comprehension.

In India today, the Opposition has become an elusive concept. It lacks coherence, frame, and a sense of leadership. At the ground level, it appears like a cantankerous sense of individuals. Even worse, the Congress sounds incoherent about its main constituencies. Former party president Sonia Gandhi has moved from the Lok Sabha to the Rajya Sabha, and rumour is that Rahul Gandhi might shift from his Wayanad seat to a more comfortable one in Telangana. Suddenly the Congress as a party seems to lack fixity. When constituencies become brittle, the sense of the party as an institution gets brittle. Constituents like Amethi have about them an almost sacrosanct presence, having a geological continuity. The Congress as a party oozes tentativeness and tenuousness.

Yatra is entropic

The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra must be looked at from this perspective. It began with a sense of excitement and anticipation. Rahul Gandhi has begun conveying a tentativeness. He does not realise that a contest in cinematic terms has moved beyond the interval. The plot has thickened, but the hero chooses to be absent-minded. What was planned as a dynamo to revitalise the party suddenly appears entropic.

One must read this event in a context. One must look at the politics in a hierarchical and systematic sense. The yatra, the Congress, and the Opposition are three separate levels of politics, each depending on the other. They are almost in a cybernetic relationship. The systematic dimension is missing. The yatra sounds absent-minded, the Congress lost, and the Opposition factionalized.

When Rahul Gandhi shifts constituencies, he creates a sense of uncertainty which people find difficult to cope with. He seems to have little idea of the Opposition as a game plan. The battle must be read in strategic terms of electoral games. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is moving like a juggernaut. It may not have ideas, or a sense of the future, but it makes the Congress sound like yesterday's newspaper. The yatra was meant to create a network, and to publicise local debates that the second edition lacks the fizz; it is not able to connect in a creative way.

Rahul Gandhi must understand that his tentativeness adds little to political consolidation. As a leader, he is supposed to look permanent, entrenched, and in control. Shifting constituencies indicates the ramshackle-ness of the party and conveys a lack of confidence. One must see how the spectator responds to it.

Much can be done

The spectator, no matter how fickle, had encouraged the first yatra, The Bharat Jodo Yatra. A pity they feel let down. The least they can expect is a leader who stands firm. Here the mass media becomes critical. If it loses interest or becomes sceptical, Rahul Gandhi becomes nostalgia. A form of non-being. The media's control over its fate is enormous.

You cannot have leadership where the leader sounds like a tentative candidate, with a tenuous constituency. The party, the Opposition, and even the ordinary citizen expect more. People hate a politics of disquiet. If Rahul Gandhi is to be a symbol of continuity, he must signal permanence. He cannot sound like a weak hypothesis. He cannot make the Congress, the grand old party, sound half-dead. There is so much he can do.

Rahul Gandhi offers no ideas

The yatra can become a theatre for future ideas. The BJP in its policy ignores ideas of peace and the Anthropocene. The internationalism of India does not come out clearly. Rahul Gandhi can raise questions, and involve people in debates where every street walk becomes an act of political pedagogy. For example, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is distorting the idea of the South. Rahul Gandhi, whose constituency in the South, can give a different definition, in contrast to the BJP's parochialism.

But Rahul Gandhi offers no ideas. His strategies convey even less. Yet, if the three levels were to combine, it would revitalise the future of politics. A sense of rhythm, and continuity would enter the Congress; but the sadness is that while concerned critics point it out, there is a silence on the side of the party. The emptiness gets more frightening as the BJP in its self-righteousness becomes more authoritarian.

It's like the old fable about the horseshoe: for want of a constituency, a yatra was lost. For want of a yatra, a party was lost. For want of a party, an Opposition was lost. For want of an Opposition, democracy was lost. This, the future will not forget.

(Shiv Visvanathan is an academic, and member of compost heap — a group in search of alternative imaginations)