Rahul Gandhi's uphill march to woo farmers

To a question about how long a padyatra (a political walkathon) should last, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is believed to have replied, "Pad milne tak (Till you get the seat of power)."

Although political walkathons may have a clear aim, prevailing political circumstances can easily subvert that.

This was the bitter experience of Chandrashekhar who went on a 4,260 km long Bharat Yatra in 1983. Its declared aim was to revive the rapport between the political class and the people but it actually sought to catapult the "Young Turk" to the top political slot of prime minister. Indira Gandhi's assassination, however, ensured that his Janata Party failed miserably at the hustings, and was reduced to only 10 seats in the 1984 elections. Although Chandrashekhar acquired 15 pieces of prime real estate under the guise of Bharat Yatra Kendras in the process, the top job remained elusive till November 1990 when he got the job for seven months because of an accident of circumstances.

How does then one view the political prospects of Rahul Gandhi's not so long footmarch from Greater Noida to Aligarh? It is a significant political gesture challenging Mayawati's monopoly of power in a state which has central weight in Indian politics - it contributes 80 seats to the Lok Sabha.

Attempt

Rahul Gandhi's attempt is to galvanise the Congress party in a state where it is virtually nonexistent today. How can he do that? Since the Congress is not a party that overtly encourages caste-based social engineering, preferring to address caste and community issues only obliquely, it has to have a twopronged strategy - raise electoral issues which cut across these social fractures; and use policies that favour its traditional social base without using divisive communal strategies.

Rahul Gandhi's attempt on the first front has been to identify broad unifying issues such as forcible land acquisition by the State especially in Western UP; and development issues linked to drought and farmers' suicides in Bundelkhand. His political mentor Digvijaya Singh has given a voice to the woes of the Muslim community in the Congress, and the government has complemented this with policy announcements such as its intention to provide reservations in higher education and public sector jobs for socially and economically backward Muslim communities. The proposal to set up an Equal Opportunities Commission is, among other things, aimed at ensuring that the minorities are not discriminated against in private sector employment.

However, the party has no social base to speak of in a state where political support is galvanised and rewarded on the basis of caste and sub-caste loyalties. The castes which used to support the Congress - the upper caste Hindus and Muslims - have divided loyalties now. Different sections of the upper castes support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress or the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The Muslims hitch their wagon in every election to non-BJP candidates who have a fair chance of winning. The Dalits and the backward castes have their own parties - the BSP and the Samajwadi Party, respectively.

Reality

And the farmers of western UP have their own caste-based party to represent their economic interests - Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).

In terms of caste equations then, this leaves the Congress nowhere.

Perhaps the calculation is that Mayawati's stint in power would have led to some disenchantment and there is hope that even some of her traditional voters might shift to the Congress. However, that is a residual strategy with an uncertain outcome considering that Mayawati has provided a semblance of governance in the state after a long time.

Moreover, mobilisational strategies can be converted into votes only if the Congress has an organisational structure at the village and block levels which can be revived.

Here also the Congress is at a disadvantage in UP. It has been out of power since 1989 - if one does not count the misadventure by Governor Romesh Bhandari who made Jagadambika Pal the chief minister for three days from February 21 to 23, 1998.

Since the Congress under Indira Gandhi essentially became a party which was put together in the run up to an election, its having been out of power for two decades, with no prospect of victory in the next election, means the opportunist cadre which used to flock to it, no longer does so.

Simultaneously, elections in India have moved from grandstanding to micro-management. This means deployment of party workers at individual polling booths to ensure that party supporters are encouraged to cast their votes, errant voters are brought to the polling booth and malpractices by the rival parties are prevented.

Challenge

The Congress lacks such foot soldiers in UP today. It will have to live with the lack of organisational and ideological commitment of those it must pay handsomely to do the job. With only about eight months left before election activities are initiated in February and no credible evidence that the Congress would either oust Mayawati or grab the second position, putting together a party structure that extends to the block level will be an uphill task.

Mayawati has already named nearly 85 per cent of her candidates for the 403-seat assembly and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party has named nearly half of them. The Congress has not named a single candidate as yet and may be hard put to field even 200 credible candidates. Nor unlike the other parties does the Congress have a chief ministerial candidate to project.

So even if Rahul raises the contentious issues in UP, of sugarcane prices, the demand for trifurcation of UP, drought in Bundelkhand and its drinking and irrigation water crisis, perennial floods and encephalitis in eastern UP or the law and order problems of central UP, those who come to see Rahul Gandhi will not necessarily vote Congress. Even if they were slightly inclined to go beyond caste loyalties in politics and sustain that desire for the next eight to nine months, there is no political mechanism which the Congress has in the state to convert that desire into votes.