should-congress-have-fought-on-its-own-in-bihar

In 1998, during the Pachmarhi ‘Chintan Shivr’, the Congress passed a resolution to contest alone instead of forming alliances. The time has come for the party to dust that resolution and have a relook at it, if it really wants to reinvent, rejuvenate and reinvigorate itself. Under the current arrangement of alliances, it is the smaller partners who are getting benefited more than the Congress, which is only conceding its own ground to them, just because of an obsession “to keep the BJP out of power”. But the BJP is still managing to retain power.

 

The three-week ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ by senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi drew huge crowds across all the places it passed through. Gandhi connected well with people. He was indeed accompanied by the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav and Deepankar Bhatacharya of the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist. But, there was no doubt who stole the limelight. People wanted to see and listen to Rahul.

 

It was from this ‘yatra’ that the RJD leadership, both Lalu Prasad Yadav and Tejashwi, started feeling jittery. Tejashwi later carried out a week-long ‘solo’ yatra on his own, in Bihar, apparently to re-establish his own and party’s dominance in the alliance.

 

At the same time, the RJD wanted Tejashwi to be declared as the Chief Ministerial candidate of the Mahagatbandhan (the Grand Alliance). While the Congress has continued to resist it even till now, it goes without saying that in case the Grand Alliance wins the elections, Tejashwi will be the natural choice for the Chief Ministerial position.

 

It is a do or die battle for the RJD. The party has remained out of power for 20 years in the state now. It also fared very badly in the last Lok Sabha elections in 2024, when it could win just four of the 40 parliamentary seats in Bihar. The Congress won three. That way the Congress would look like inching closer to the RJD. But there is a lot of difference between the parliamentary and assembly elections.

 

However, Lalu Prasad Yadav is well aware of the threat posed to the RJD’s survival by the Congress. Because the Congress has mainly been targeting the same “electoral constituency”, which happens to be the stronghold of the RJD, like the minorities (the Muslims) and the Backward Classes (the Yadavs).

 

As RJD rivals, the BJP and the JDU have entirely different electoral constituencies, hardly overlapping with each other. The JDU leader and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also enjoys a lot of influence among the Muslim community, but that is no match to that of Lalu Yadav. Besides, Nitish’s alliance with the BJP comes at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the minority voters.

 

The RJD is fighting two battles at the same time. One, it wants to dislodge the Nitish-led NDA government, which has been there since 2005, barring an interregnum of few years, when Nitish flirted with the RJD-Congress. At the same time, RJD is wary of the Congress’ expanding footprints in Bihar. Any Congress expansion in Bihar, Lalu knows, will not be at the cost of BJP-JDU, but mainly at the cost of the RJD.

 

That is the reason RJD tried to drive a hard bargain during the seat-sharing negotiations. Congress had to give up nine seats as compared to 2020. While the party contested 70 seats five years ago, this time it is contesting from 61 seats only. The RJD on the other hand is contesting on 143 seats, against 144 it contested last time. Remaining 39 seats have been left to other smaller allies like the VIP, the CPI-ML, CPI and the CPM. Lalu has ensured that his party contests on two-and-a-half times more seats than the Congress.

 

The Congress should ideally have asserted its position in Bihar this time, even if it meant risking an NDA re-election. RJD is a pale shadow of its past. The party obviously knows that the Congress can grow in Bihar at the cost of the RJD only. RJD still does have a large cadre base spread across the state and is indeed in a position to challenge the NDA, but only in alliance with the Congress. In fact, it is the Congress that has helped RJD to survive since 1995. Otherwise, if the RJD had no alliance with the Congress, it would have disintegrated long ago.

 

Even now, it is the Congress that is helping the RJD survive. This is because the Congress is desperate to get the BJP defeated in the proverbial way, “by hook or by crook”. That is where the Congress’ problem lies. The grand old party has centred its politics around a single theme of “getting the BJP defeated” instead of seeing itself win.

 

The BJP has learned a lot of things from the Congress. The Congress should also do the same thing; learn certain things from the BJP. The saffron party did not emerge as the largest in the country on its own. It did forge alliances. It also supported VP Singh’s government from outside, to keep Congress out of power, but that was just a “limited time” arrangement. The BJP did not make it a permanent policy, like the Congress has made it today.

 

Time has come for the Congress to look beyond “keeping the BJP out of power” obsession. This should only be a short-term strategy. The Congress had a golden chance in Bihar. It cannot form the government on its own instantly. But it can spread out and expand its base. For that, it will have to swallow the bitter pill of taking the risk of letting the BJP-led NDA win again.

 

Congress should have capitalised on the decline of the RJD and asserted its position in terms of seats. RJD does not have any option. For the party it is a matter of life and death. The RJD could have gone to any extent to keep the Congress with itself. But instead of seeking more seats, the Congress conceded nine seats from what it had contested last time in 2020. That is not the way you can expand your base.

 

The Congress must revisit the resolution it passed in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, ‘Chintan Shivr’ (brainstorming session) in 1998, when it resolved to go alone, ‘ekla chalo’, without alliances. However, it abandoned the idea very soon as the party cadres thought it may not be able to form governments, particularly at the centre, on its own. The party did form the government in 2004 and 2009, heading the United Progressive Alliance, but since then it has seen a consistent decline.

 

The Congress will need to take a cue from the BJP getting absolute majority on its own in 2014 and 2019, besides reaching within a striking distance in 2024, when it fell short by 30 seats only. The point here is that it is not that the single party government era is over. The Congress can revive itself, if not to emerge as a single party winner, but as a dominant partner in any alliance. Like the BJP has positioned itself right now.

 

The Congress must also understand that the regional parties, rather the family-driven parties, like the RJD in Bihar and the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, will not let it grow or expand on its own. The Congress is undoubtedly going out of way to woo the Muslim electorate, at the cost of the Hindu votes. The party leadership’s refusal to visit Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is an example. It has been taking the risk of antagonising the majority community for the minority community. But for the minority community, at least in the two states of Bihar and UP, the RJD and the SP are the first, rather the only preferences.

 

Bihar could have been an experiment for the Congress to assert and emerge as a strong and dominant partner. A party that aspires to replace the BJP cannot afford to play second fiddle that too at a very small scale to alliance partners in two politically important states like UP and Bihar. There is a lot of space for the Congress in these states, only if it is willing to act bold and brave by taking some risks. Above all, it needs to get itself out of the fixation of “keeping BJP out of power”. The existing strategy has not worked so far, so better have a relook and change it.

 

The Congress needs to believe what the people of the country believe that if and when anyone can replace the BJP, it can only be the Congress, not the parties like the RJD, the SP, the TMC or the DMK. These parties may check or restrict the BJP’s spread and that too to a limited extent only, but they can never replace the BJP and keep it out of power.

 

The existing arrangement between the Congress and the parties like the RJD and the SP is benefitting these parties only and not the Congress, as it may benefit the RJD in the ensuing assembly elections in Bihar. What will the Congress gain, even if the Grand Alliance manages to win? For the Congress, returns would be far too less than what it has invested there.