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Big jolt for Congress in Karnataka : will it wake up ? |
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B.I Saini
The people of Karnataka have brought the BJP to power in the state, and in the process, given a big jolt to the Congress which was hoping to win back the state. As BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate Lal Krishan Advani said, the Congress would be deluding itself if it blames its defeat on local factors. There may be some local factors, the most important being the Congress going it alone, when it needed the support of a regional party, in this case, H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) to defeat the BJP’s victorious foray into the South. But the Congress ignored the fact that it is no longer the strongest party in the realm, and needed the support of regional players, dominant or otherwise, for making a mark in most of the states.
The BJP is attributing its victory to what Advani called the UPA government’s “utter failure” to control prices, its `soft’ policy on terrorism and insensitivity towards the plight of farmers, many of whom have been committing suicide on failure to pay back farm loans. This may or may not be completely correct, but the price rise issue is a potent one in a country like India at any time and place. The BJP itself should know as its `India Shining’ campaign prior to the 2004 Lok Sabha elections could not bring it victory. Despite increase in affluence, large numbers of people in all parts of the country are existing just on the subsistence level, or a little above that. India may have the largest number of billionaires in the developing world, but this is no solace for the masses, who have to struggle hard to make both ends meet. Inflation silently erodes the earnings and wealth of the aam admi (Common man), though it has hardly any effect on the life styles of the rich and famous.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram will need to abandon their laid-back approach to the problem of rising prices. People will not be satisfied if they are just informed that inflation is because of rising global oil and food prices, over which the government has no control. This will bring the people no comfort.
The Congress also has to realise that in many of the most populous states, the party is no longer in a position to get back to power or to win a majority of the seats in the Lok Sabha from the particular state on its own. Despite Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi saying that the biggest mistake the Congress made in Uttar Pardesh was to align with other parties, the fact remains that the Congress is not able to go much beyond winning its pocket-boroughs in the state associated with the Nehru-Gandhi family. There are signs that the Congress is realising that, going by its attempts to build bridges with Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party after Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati made it clear that it is not going to align with the Congress, and will go it alone not only in Uttar Pradesh, but also in other states. The Congress desperately needs to have a tie up with one of the major parties in Uttar Pradesh if it is to put up a credible performance in the state during next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
There are also reports that the Congress is trying to expand relations with other players in Bihar including Janata Dal (United)’s Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. But the problem here is how to keep both the Janata Dal (United) and Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on the Congress side. The task is obviously very difficult.
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