Isn’t Rahul Gandhi responsible for the crumbling of the I.N.D.I. Alliance?

By the time Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra’ reached West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee had rejected any seat sharing with Congress in West Bengal. AAP too rejected any kind of seat sharing with Congress. Before that, Mayawati of the BSP, in a press conference, declared not to be part of the I.N.D.I. Alliance. There’s still uncertainty in seat sharing in UP, with Akhilesh Yadav of SP and Uddhav Thackeray’s Siv Sena too being firm on their demand for seat sharing. And now Nitish Kumar has returned to the NDA. The much-discussed I.N.D.I. Alliance has crumbled, and it appears that the I.N.D.I. Alliance is likely to be reduced to UPA.

Many pollsters earlier predicted that the I.N.D.I. Alliance would damage the BJP-led NDA’s prospects in the 2024 general election by reducing the size of the mandate. But recent developments show that the BJP has become much stronger than earlier and is likely to get a thumping majority in the 2024 general election. The most important reason would be the crumbling of the I.N.D.I. Alliance. The question now is: who’s responsible for the failure of such an ambitious alliance?

My analysis says the Congress and its leader, Rahul Gandhi, are responsible for the failure of the I.N.D.I. Alliance. Before I explain my analysis, let’s know what the I.N.D.I. Alliance is.

What is the I.N.D.I. Alliance?

Nowadays, Indian politics in national space is mainly contested between alliances. The ruling BJP party is heading an alliance named the NDA (National Democratic Alliance), whereas the main opposition Congress is leading an alliance called the UPA (United Progressive Alliance). The stronger regional satraps, who are neither in the NDA nor in the UPA, are called the third front (declared or undeclared). For example, TMC, AAP, BRS, BJD, Left parties, SP, BSP, etc.

Some regional leaders, like Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, Sitaram Yechury, etc., thought of a grand alliance with the UPA to compete against the NDA. The I.N.D.I. Alliance is an alliance of the third front with the UPA, not an extended UPA. Let me give an example of an alliance with the UPA. In Bihar, when Nitish Kumar ditched the NDA and joined the RJD and Congress to form the government in 2022, he didn’t join the UPA. Rather, he created a Mahagathabandhan with the UPA (RJD and Congress) and Left parties. Left parties are not part of the UPA. Thus, the I.N.D.I. Alliance is like a Mahagathabandhan in national space.

What’s the difference between the UPA and Mahagathabandhan or the I.N.D.I. Alliance?

As the UPA is led by Congress, most of the time, especially in national politics, Congress is the undisputed leader, like the BJP in the NDA. But in Mahagathabandhan, Congress is part of the UPA and not the leader of Mahagathabandhan. For example, in Bihar, Nitish Kumar was the CM, and Tejasvi Yadav from RJD was the deputy CM. The chiefs of RJD and JDU will decide on the alliance’s entire seat sharing.

The I.N.D.I. Alliance was the effort of third-front leaders like Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, and the Left leaders. For political compulsion, the regional non-Congress UPA leaders too wanted such an alliance where they could place a single candidate against BJP-led NDA candidates at least in 400 seats. The only condition was that the Congress shouldn’t lead the alliance like it leads the UPA.

Why is Congress responsible for the crumbling of the I.N.D.I. Alliance?

First Nitish Kumar, then Sard Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Sitaram Yechury, D. Raja, etc., started the effort to unite the alliance by visiting different regional leaders and parties. However, as the Congress Party became a part of the alliance, BJD, BRS, YSRCP, etc. stayed out of the alliance, although they weren’t averse to a post-poll alliance. Congress was pleased with such an alliance, which provided a fighting chance for its prospects. Then Bharat Yodo Yatra-1 was started by Rahul Gandhi, and during that, Congress won the Karnataka Assembly election decisively. This win in fact changed the attitude of Congress and party thought; it’s Rhul Gandhi’s charisma that made them win in Karnataka. That’s why in the 2023 assembly election in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, they didn’t accommodate other I.N.D.I. Alliance partners like SP, BSP, Left parties, etc. They lost the election of three Hindi heartland states pathetically.

That should be the time when Congress should have realized the power of the Alliance, even in their dominated political states. They should have taken a back seat and would have allowed the third-front leaders to take center stage and focus on their organizational rebuilding in their influence zones.

Here, Rahul Gandhi, who is the PM candidate for Congress, should have taken the main role in coordinating among the different partners of the I.N.D.I. Alliance and even conceding to their demands in their relevant influence zone. Let’s take the example of the BJP. Despite their numbers, the BJP offered the CM post to their junior allies in Bihar and Maharashtra. During Vajpayee era, BJP had to concede to party leaders like George Fernandes, Jaya Lalitha, Karunanidhi, Bala Saheb Thackeray, Mamata Banerjee, Navin Patnaik, Prakash Singh Badal, etc. In fact, many experts said that had the NDA partners not been stronger during the Vajpayee era, Vajpayee wouldn’t have been Prime Minister ever because the RSS’s first choice was L.K. Advani. Had the third-front leaders trusted Rahul Gandhi as the leader, they could have joined the UPA instead of making the I.N.D.I. Alliance. This point was perhaps never understood by Congress or Rahul Gandhi.

Anyway, instead of understanding the mindset of non-UPA partners, Rahul started another ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, which is viewed as promoting Rahul Gandhi’s persona and candidature as Prime Ministerial candidate. This has nothing to do with the betterment of the I.N.D.I. Alliance. Mamata Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav, on record, said that they weren’t invited to this Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra’. Sometimes I think this ‘Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra’ has nothing to do with the BJP-led NDA but rather an exercise to promote Rahul Gandhi as the PM candidate of the I.N.D.I. Alliance, to which non-UPA partners aren’t agreeing for obvious reasons. The moment there’s a Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi perception that goes public, it will always be a cake walk for Narendra Modi.

Rahul Gandhi should have taken a backstage optically and center-stage behind the doors in coordinating different partners of the I.N.D.I. Alliance. He didn’t do that and deputed some officials, which was not taken well by powerful regional satraps. They started focusing on their own prospects instead of following the typical Congress line, which is to rally behind Rahul Gandhi.

I would say this is the political immaturity of Congress as well as its leader, Rahul Gandhi, who lost an opportunity to give a tough fight to the Narendra Modi-led NDA in the upcoming 2024 general election.

What do you think?