Look back in the future

Even as the vast majority of the poor are crushed by economic policies of the UPA, the apolitical stance of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh might spell doom for the grand old party in the days to come, if they don't change their ways

Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

Maulana Kashmiri has seen many summers. By his own admission he is more than 80-years-old, but has a memory which can embarrass his young and inquisitive students. Sitting on the floor at his spartan meeting room, 'baithak' in Deoband, the sleepy town in Uttar Pradesh where the famous seminary, Darul-ul-Uloom, is located, Maulana, who has taught 'Sunnah' for many years in this famous institution, is angry with the Congress party. The venerable Maulana has a reason. A committed Congressman, he is upset with the top leaders for their failure to connect with their grassroots party 'cadre' and supporters. Speaking in chaste Hindustani, he has many stories to tell about the manner in which Jawaharlal Nehru and later his daughter, Indira Gandhi, looked after Congressmen. "They were ever so caring towards us".

Many of these anecdotes, heard from people in different parts of UP and the country, had contributed in feeding the myth about the charisma and leadership of the Nehru-Gandhi family and how they epitomised national interest and brought fealty for them amongst common people. Their manifest sensitivity helped them in garnering electoral support for the Congress. Little wonder that the Congress ruled the country, with a brief interruption, for 40 odd years before hubris caught up with its subsequent leadership. Usually, people like Maulana Kashmiri look for a recipe to revive the Congress in nostalgia about its great leaders and the grand old party, but the moot question remains: Can the past provide an answer to a present where even gentle zephyr have begun to shift the sand dunes of Indian politics?

In the past, a road show like the kind undertaken by the young scion of the Gandhi family, Rahul, in the recent UP assembly elections, would have helped in raking in a lot of votes for the Congress. Isn't charisma all about making brief appearances and slicing through caste and communal divisions? Nehru, Indira Gandhi and to some extent Rajiv Gandhi  managed with fewer such road shows, public appearances and televised speeches to win a mandate for their parties, but young Rahul, who braved the sun and the hot gusts of the plains of UP by swinging through more than 140 assembly constituencies, drew almost nothing. The party experienced a sharp fall in their vote percentage from a high of 15 per cent in 2004 in which they led in 66 assembly segments to a measly 8.6 per cent where they won an unimpressive 21 seats. A major share of these seats came from the Amethi-Rae Bareilly-Sultanpur belt where Rahul's sister, Priyanka, campaigned furiously to save the Gandhi family's pride.

It is not that Rahul did not get the crowds in many places, but for some reason his pitch for change did not make any impact on the masses reeling under price rise, crime, corruption and poor governance. "Price rise has been back-breaking and we know this has more to do with the government in Delhi rather than the government of Mulayam Singh Yadav," explained Aamir, a teacher based in Bijnor. Voters displayed political sophistication to differentiate between the ill doings of the state government and that of the Centre and vent their anger against both. It was an anti-incumbency vote against those in power, whether they were in Lucknow or Delhi.

Communists who support the UPA alliance also had to face the wrath of the voters. For the first time since 1952, both the mainline Left parties did not get even a single seat in the 403 member house in UP despite the fact that they got tacit support from both Mulayam Singh and the Congress.