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Yeh Kya Hua, Kaise Hua: Dissecting the Congress’ Lapsus Regnī 

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Baffling exit polls and puncturing the Congress complacency, the BJP has battled anti-incumbency to secure its third term in Haryana. An inordinate number of dissidents, glaring portents for division within the party’s central leadership, a failure to foreground fresh faces and an unsubstantiated socialist rhetoric, inter alia, have come together to form, what seems to have been an insurmountable impediment for the Congress. Maharashtra and Jharkhand no longer appear as welcoming.

The Congress has thus far failed to diagnose the rot in its strategy. Its narratives involute upon themselves, constantly miscarrying with the public, and its parroting of the same old defeated stratagems now heads ad nauseam. The Haryana defeat carries with itself considerable ignominy for the Congress which has been smug in its prophecies of victory before and the natural course of the ensuing result has been invariably failure. While Congress president Kharge denies that the Maharashtra assembly elections shall be affected by the defeat, the BJP and its allies remain confident that the ruling Mahayuti in Maharashtra has been only further strengthened. It is implausible that the long-enduring, anti-incumbency temperament shall so suddenly flip, which leaves room to investigate what the BJP has done right during the campaigns and on-ground. 

Primarily, a deluge of rebel candidates have fractured the Congress’ vote bank, drawing from it a generous amount it could have used against BJP. The INC lost 16 seats to rebels and independents, severely weakening it against the BJP’s far more structured and organisationally sound ticket management, particularly after UP in the Lok Sabha elections. 

The following table illustrates the Congress’ losses to dissidents:

Kalka Congress lost by a margin of 11k votes (Rebel got 32k votes)
Pundri Congress came 3rd; Congress rebel got 40k votes and lost by 2k.
Rai Lost by a margin of 4.5k votes (Rebel got 12k votes)
Gohana Lost by a margin of 10k votes (Rebel got 15k votes)
Safidon Lost by a margin of 4k votes (Rebel got 29k votes)
Dadri Lost by a margin of 2k votes (Rebel got 6k votes)
Tigaon Congress came 3rd; Congress rebel got 57k votes and lost by 37k votes.
Ambala Cantt. Congress came 3rd; Congress rebel got 53k votes and lost by 7k votes.
Assandh Lost by a margin of 2k votes (Rebel got 16k votes)
Uchana Kalan Lost by 39 votes (Rebel got 32k votes)
Bhadra Lost by a margin of 7.5k votes (Rebel got 27k votes)
Mahendragarh Lost by a margin of 2k votes (Rebel got 21k votes)
Sohna Lost by a margin of 11k votes (Rebel got 70k votes)
Ballabgarh Congress came 4th; Congress rebel came 2nd, receiving 44k votes and lost by 17k votes.
Dabwali Lost by a margin of 610 votes (Rebel got 2k votes)
Rania Lost by a margin of 4k votes (Rebel got 36k votes)
Bahadurgarh Congress rebel won the seat as an independent; Congress candidate came 3rd.

Further, the Congress made no attempts to restructure its leadership. The young faces—Selja in Haryana and Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan—were conceded to the older ones, of Hooda and Gehlot respectively. The pattern makes itself manifest with an octogenarian as the party president. The BJP, on the other hand, deployed 60 fresh faces to stand against the ancient heavyweights, albeit losing ones, of the Congress. The Congress renominated 17 of its stale candidacies that had lost in the past. The 2023 state election Telangana win for the Congress, supplanting the previously incumbent Bharatia Rashtra Samiti, came in only after they took a chance with a new face – Revanth Reddy’s. 

Congress also almost consciously defined itself as a ‘one-caste party’. The Congress’ overdependence on the Jat population proved to be a fatal oversight. The BJP conquered the Congress’ meek share by consolidating the 75 percent of the non-Jat population. Congress’ implicit preference for Hooda to Selja handed to the BJP critical accusatory ammunition, allowing them to charge the Congress with anti-Dalit sentiments and a neglect for the non-Jat population. Even the Jat votes, that the Congress hoped to completely own, had to be shared with INLD, further increasing BJP’s uncontested share of the non-Jat votes.

Despite the Congress’ efforts to appeal to the OBC demographic, comprising 40 per cent of Haryana’s population, BJP’s Saini clearly won the affection of the masses. Ajay Singh Yadav, chairman of the AICC OBC Congress, himself confessed to the Congress’ disregard for the OBC belt in Haryana. The CSDS-Lokniti survey reports the strength of the OBC population in favour of the BJP. The OBC support flourished after Saini replaced Khattar as chief minister. The BJP managed to assimilate into its supporter base a “rainbow coalition” of Brahmins, Punjabi Khatris, non-Jatavs, Yadavs and SCs. The “Lakhpati Drone Ladies” project engendered a massively positive reception of the BJP’s attempts to “elevate the SCs to general status”, in the words of an ITI student from Ambala. 

The Gandhi siblings campaigned with much pomp, but rather late. The BJP’s strategy had been to counter the anti-incumbency silently and aggressively. The Congress’ work assumed tangibility too late, and in that they have not defeated the image, one needing much redressal, of the relative passivity of the party and the unattractive languor in its reactions. RaGa’s flimsy socialist narrative did not help their case with the upwardly-mobile social classes as well as the urban votes.

Analysing Congress’ trends, juxtaposed with those of the BJP, it remains a matter of irrefutable truth that the ability of the BJP to counter is what keeps its power from waning. Given the BJP’s untarnished dominance, only in terms of its claims to power and occupation of office, it is peculiar that the Congress keeps succumbing to its flippant confidence in its, in all honesty, paltry chances to overthrow the Saffron Goliath. What blights this torpid David and wherefore does he hibernate? One cannot help but nod in terror as they ponder the truth of Modi’s tirades when he warns of the “chaos” that a Congress government shall bring.

 

Read Also: Phogat’s Haryana – A changing political landscape

 

Featured Image Credits: PTI

 

Aayudh Pramanik

[email protected]

 

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Features

Phogat’s Haryana – A changing political landscape

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With the 90-member house, Haryana Assembly Elections looming large and the political behemoths, BJP and Congress, attempting to clear through the foliage of ‘caste equations’ and intra-party conflicts towards victory, the climate of Haryana seems to be rapidly developing in favour of new and odd turns, especially those that clearly signal an anti-incumbency sentiment. However, the BJP is also rallying its regiments against the Opposition.

The exodus of saffron that had swallowed the nation with the first Modi government of the 2014-2019 term, seems to have been threatened with sporadic contaminations by the mammoth hand of Congress, hued in the nation’s colours itself. The poster child of Congress’ comeback, the Congress’ prodigal son Rahul Gandhi, has orchestrated significant and palpable attempts to unify the image of Congress and its politics. However, it has also been made clear that they are occasions of contrivance and, not organic resolutions. Nonetheless, the Congress has made a spectacular dent in the BJP’s vote bank – burning example of which may be seen in BJP’s recent UP loss, despite the religious politics deployed by the party to embellish the sentiment of Hindu preponderance amidst the demographic and electoral majority.

Congress’ steady progress towards re-entrance in the field of active and contesting governance has been thus far just that – a steady progress. This is to say that if their hopes of dethroning Modi Ki Guarantee is to come to fruition, they must push harder. We may thus analyse the strategies taken up by both parties to offend and defend against each other.

The three central social discourses reserving the most of critical influence on the current of the course are, as Karthik K.R. et alia have put it, Kisan, Jawan and Pehelwan, i.e., the farmer’s protest, the Agniveer scheme and the Vinesh Phogat sexual harassment case, respectively. The first and the last, potent weapons in the hands of the opposition, have already announced a preference against the incumbency. Swooping in with the opportunity to turn the tide with her narrative, Phogat has descended into the realm of politics, armed with the story of her struggle against the state and by extension the state of the government, directing her focus towards the Julana constituency. She has premised her narrative on the back of women’s empowerment, sexual harassment, and the deplorable educational and health facilities, having already garnered significant support on behalf of the Congress from the female vote bank.

In the rural areas, the BJP share had declined as a reaction to, amidst many others, Manohar Lal Khattar’s leadership. This was Congress’ gain. The BJP has launched outreach programmes powered by the RSS and their grassroot presence to regain the vastly-depleted vote share. Additionally, they have adopted a distancing strategy wherein they have invisibilised Khattar in most of their campaigns, including rallies and photos on posters. The urban support for BJP seems to be far stronger.

The OBC demographic of Haryana, that figures in around 40% of the population, has proved to be indispensable to both parties. The Congress has been a proponent of the caste census and announced the OBC Creamy Layer income limit to stand at ten lakhs, leaving behind the BJP’s eight lakhs. The OBC population has historically been tilted towards the BJP but now, stands at an impasse, unable to pick a side, for the BJP’s efforts to reel them into their side of the court have not passed unnoticed. However, the wind augurs an ultimate Congress victory in this case, since the intra-party schisms have not only stopped at Congress’ doorstep.

The BJP OBC leader Karan Dev Kamboj’s defection to Congress does not bode well for the party. There has been an attempt to target the non-Jat (in popular parlance the 36-biradari) voters as well as the Dalit voters by the BJP. The Congress believes that they might insure themselves against this loss by uniting the Jat and Dalit vote bank, which shall inevitably prove to be a daunting task given the chasmic disparity in social and financial conditions between those two communities. Prominent Dalit leader and the front-person for the Dalit leadership in Congress, Kumari Selja, has resorted to accentuating maati(soil) as opposed to jati(caste) in order to invoke “a fraternal coalition of different caste groups.” While the Congress has been labouring to present a distinct portrait of unity, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kumari Selja, and Randeep Singh Surjewala holding separate rallies betrays an obvious condition of acrimony born of differing political ideology.

Broiling tensions and gritty countermeasures unfortunately do not prognosticate a certain outcome, albeit BJP’s foundations have certainly been shaken. The Congress has upgraded its politics from online slander to a tangible candour, and that has irrefutably elevated its reception in the eyes of the public, which shall reflect in the Haryana elections more than ever.

 

Read Also: Rahul Gandhi’s Tryst with Destiny: The Revival of the Last Gandhi

Featured Image Credits: TOI

Aayudh Pramanik

[email protected]

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Arts & Culture

Doodh, Dahi Aur Ghee

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Within the dichotomy of growing up in metro cities and of belonging to places far removed from them, exists the colourful void that is your identity. But don’t they say that too many cooks spoil the broth?

All of my life I have struggled with being Haryanvi. Born and brought up in Gurgaon (we will never call it Gurugram), I have seen both sides of the story–the gaon and the galiyaan of Haryana and the elitist metropolitans that exist on the fringes of it. I have always existed in the middle of these two worlds: too elite for the Haryanvi kids but too “rowdy” for the city ones, something which always left me struggling with my identity.

 

Stepping outside Haryana and moving away from its people, you come across a different (if you ask me, distorted) image of Haryana–its people are rude, its culture is not modern, its the land of Fortuners and doodh, dahi, aur ghee–and even though there are things that might be true, but the demarcation of the culture of a whole state as “barbaric”, for the lack of a better word, is outrageous.

 

Living in Delhi NCR makes you come face-to-face with a very mutated version of the Haryanvi culture. For most, it becomes a culture that is the voice of political parties and a platform for all your gaalis. It becomes an identity of the “uneducated”. “Haryana walon ke toh munh hi nhi lgna chahiye (You shouldn’t get involved with people from Haryana)” is one version of the many taunts and judgments that have come to be accepted by people over time. Schools ban you from using the language because more than being associated with a culture, it has come to be associated with a select few, who have gone on to create a specific image—one that we are all okay turning a blind eye to—and this is the image that gets carried home. “I usually try staying away from people who say that they are from Haryana. It might be prejudice but I wouldn’t want to take that risk,” said a third-year student, in conversation with DU Beat. 

 

With a rise in an elitist crowd and an even more elitist NCR culture, Haryana has come to be that one state everyone conveniently forgets. Now, when asked, even Gurgaon is seen as being a part of NCR before it’s a part of Haryana.

 

But on the flip side, exists another reality, completely opposite. Adoption of the Haryanvi culture, particularly the Haryanvi language and the distinct, heavy accent that comes with it, has become a commonplace phenomenon in the Delhi NCR circuit. When you look around, you see a certain accent being used by the Delhi kids. You see that same accent find its way into the NCR, from Noida to Faridabad. From schools to colleges to drivers on the road, you find the echoes of Haryana, if not its whole culture.

 

This accent might be very Haryanvi, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those who use it are. Most people speaking the language or imitating the accent are imposters, romanticising the existence of a culture that is shunned by too many. This might be out of love for the culture but it ends up doing more harm than good, simply because it usually turns out to be nothing more than the appropriation of an image of Haryana and its people that is more about chaud and tora. Most people in this crowd end up using Haryana for reasons of the wrong more than of the right, trying to capitalise on this image that the other half has created of Haryana in their heads, a villain of their own making.

 

Stuck between these two opposing sides—in a tug-of-war of language, culture, state, and identity—sits the real Haryana. No culture is without faults of its own, but the least it can ask of people is to be true to themselves. The doodh, dahi, aur ghee are the base pillars of Haryana in its truest form, but then so are its people. A certain rise of voice here and a different accent there don’t make the culture of Haryana a monster to be feared or a beast to be tamed. To the outsider, each culture may be a specimen, and words of love can be of hatred, but it’s only Haryana that knows the love it hides behind its Bawlibooch and Bawli Tared.

 

Feature Image: The Tribune

 

Manasvi Kadian

[email protected]

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