Congress-mukt Bharat is close to fruition, but here's a contest the BJP would like to avoid

A new scenario is emerging in Indian politics with the continuing decline of the Congress, the corresponding incremental rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the resurgence of regional parties across the country.

While the BJP has been gloating over the diminishing strength of its only national rival, it is steadily being pushed into frontal conflict with ambitious state chieftains, who have started seeing the party as the only gorilla in the room.

This is a contest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party would dearly like to avoid. It’s completely unfamiliar territory for the Modi and the BJP, given that their entire political strategy is based on fighting the Congress. They are also palpably nervous about taking on local bosses after being routed in Delhi and Bihar last year. Moreover, political confrontation with regional parties is bound to vitiate Modi’s slogan of “cooperative federalism”, even if he manages to keep Centre-state relations on an even keel.

Not surprisingly, both the prime minister and the BJP desperately continue to target the Gandhi dynasty, the Congress and the previous United Progressive Alliance government, even as the party becomes less and less relevant in Indian politics.

The slogan of “Congress-mukt Bharat” has little resonance among regional parties, including the BJP’s own ally, the Shiv Sena. They all know that the Congress poses little danger certainly now and possibly forever, and the real enemy is the BJP with its pan-Indian ambitions of “Kashmir to Kanyakumari” as expressed by party president Amit Shah.

Fresh phase

Indian politics has so far witnessed three phases since Independence. The first saw the Congress as the principal political pole for nearly four decades, with different opposition parties combining with each other to oust it and enjoying varying degrees of success. With the rise of the BJP in 1997, another pole embedded itself in national politics leading to the second phase, where for a little over one-and-a-half decades, first a BJP-led coalition National Democratic Alliance and then the Congress-led UPA, ruled the country. However, political gears once again changed in 2014, when the Narendra Modi-led BJP won a full majority on its own in the Lok Sabha elections, even as the Congress plunged steeply to just 44 seats to fill just 8% of the Lower House.

Subsequent state assembly polls over the past two years have further underlined the decline of the Congress and marked the spread of the BJP into new regions, but also highlighted the growing power of regional parties. The BJP has managed to defeat the Congress in a series of elections, but has gotten trounced whenever it’s been confronted by a regional party, as in Delhi and Bihar last year, or at best made marginal gains in the recent round of assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala, where local chieftains and coalitions rule the roost.

With regional parties the only bulwark against the BJP juggernaut, the Congress is increasingly forced into being an ally rather than the leader. This has already been the case in Bihar, Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where the grand old party of India has swallowed its pride and accepted the role of junior partner to regional heavyweights so as to survive.

Wobbly and vulnerable

Theoretically, the Congress could recover a bit over the next two years, which will witness a whole slew of assembly polls in Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where it was till recently the only or predominant opposition to the BJP.

Yet, the beleaguered party looks vulnerable even these states, although it is the BJP that is facing the threat of anti-incumbency in six out of these nine states. In Punjab, a third party, the Aam Aadmi Party, has not only entered the electoral battlefield but is also poised to snatch a win from the jaws of the Congress and is threatening to pull off a simultaneous coup in Goa as well.

In Gujarat, where the BJP is not only facing two-decade-long anti-incumbency but also a revolt by its core support base of Patidars, the Congress should have been confident of victory particularly after dramatic gains in recent panchayat and district municipal polls. But lack of leadership both at the national and state level raises serious questions about whether the party organisation is properly geared to take advantage of the BJP’s susceptibilities, despite the huge symbolic value of winning Narendra Modi’s home state.

Similar lethargy dogs Congress preparations to snatch back Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, both ruled for one-and-a-half decades by BJP-led governments that are now facing serious corruption charges. It’s only in Uttarakhand where the Congress appears upbeat after the Modi regime’s clumsy abortive bid to topple the Rawat government.

Litmus test

Next summer’s assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, by far the country’s most populous state, will be critical in determining the relative strength of the BJP, Congress and the emerging challenge from regional bosses and parties. If Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, as the tallest challenger to the unpopular Akhilesh Yadav government, is able to take the spoils and avenge the humiliation of not winning a single seat in Uttar Pradesh, which swept by the BJP in the 2014 general elections, it would significantly damage the saffron party while boosting the confidence of state chieftains. For the Congress, another dismal performance in the home of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty would further dent its confidence.

With the Uttar Pradesh outcome still unknown, as is the success or failure of the AAP’s daring gambit in Punjab and Goa, it is still too early to speculate on the full contours of the emerging political landscape or even the possibility of a regional front. What is certain, however, is that regional parties will be striving their utmost to contain the BJP rather than strike deals with it, even as a shrunken and humbled Congress is accommodated as an ordinary member of the pack.