The best
possible way to outwit political opponents is to establish a narrative that
people can easily relate to. While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has effectively
done so, the opposition parties have collectively failed, since the rise of the
saffron brigade to power. As a result, the ruling party’s juggernaut appears to
be unstoppable, as they keep winning one election and after another, forcing
the opposition to surrender meekly even in their own citadel. If the opposition
parties genuinely want to prevent the BJP from winning, they must come up with
a new narrative immediately to corner their political opponents, especially
with states like Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal heading to the polls
soon.
Among the
states going to polls later this year or early next year, only Assam appears
firmly aligned with the BJP, while retaining power in Bihar will be a
significant challenge. Additionally, the BJP faces an uphill task to unsettle
the regional parties from power in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. It is noteworthy
that despite various challenges ahead of the state elections, the BJP has
already launched campaigns in all the poll-bound states with leaders including
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several other
senior party leaders addressing public meetings. But no such effort is seen
from the opposition camp. With elections knocking at the door, the opposition
parties are yet to finalise an alliance in Bihar, where a defeat would be
particularly damaging for the BJP. Despite a couple of meetings between the
Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a major force in state politics,
no announcements have been made regarding their strategy for the upcoming
elections, leaving ample opportunity for the BJP to sway the electorate.
What is
necessary is to take decisive action with a focus on winning. Recently,
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged collusion between the Election Commission
(EC) and the government during the Maharashtra elections. But the fact remains
that the opposition alliance suffered a significant defeat in the election due
to its failure to project a chief ministerial face. While the people of
Maharashtra seemed to be interested in seeing Uddhav Thackeray as their Chief
Minister, the Congress put a condition that the top post would be chosen from
the party that win the most seats in the elections. The “big brother” attitude
of the Congress didn’t go down well with the electorate and that subsequently
led to the downfall of the opposition alliance. Thus, Rahul Gandhi’s allegation
appears more as an attempt to hide the party’s failure in Maharashtra than a
genuine effort to bring out the truth, particularly after the Centre
neutralised its main strategy for the Bihar elections by deciding to conduct a
caste census. The Congress should shed its “big brother” attitude to get back
to winning ways.