Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 10

Indian Politics & Policy
2014 as it was up against the very strong
anti-incumbency mood of the voters,
especially in the North of India, but
many failed to understand why Congress
failed to even move an inch ahead
of its previous performance. Voters had
already punished Congress for its misdeeds
while it was in power between
2004 and 2014, but it was unthinkable
for many to expect that voters would
punish Congress twice more when people
voted for the party in the assembly
elections in the states of Chhattisgarh,
Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan barely
six months before they cast their vote
for the national government. The performance
of Congress surprised many
because there were visible signs of anxiety
among the voters on issues related
to economic growth, joblessness, and
other livelihood issues. Evidence from
the NES 2019 clearly indicates voters
having these anxieties. Why did Congress
fail to capitalize on this anxiety
among the voters? Was there an issue of
leadership whereby people compared
Congress to the BJP?
The failure of the Congress Party
could be analyzed by the fact that whatever
discontent toward the BJP government
was, although not very much, the
party failed to even capitalize on that.
The defeat of Congress in 2014 was expected,
and it did not come to many
Congress leaders as a surprise. But the
defeat in 2019 shattered the confidence
of many Congress leaders and many
privately accept that the party needs a
change of leadership. Voters not having
trust or faith in the leadership of Congress
should be a matter of concern for
the party, but far more worrying for the
party should be the loss of trust of its
own leaders and workers for national
leadership. The party that managed to
snatch power from the BJP in the states
of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and
Chhattisgarh only few months before
the 2019 Lok Sabha performed badly
in these states during the 2019 Lok
Sabha elections. Voters made a clear
choice between the state election and
national elections. The success of Congress
in states like Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, or earlier in
Punjab indicates that strong state-level
leadership of Congress could still pose
a challenge for the BJP, but the relatively
weak national leadership of Congress
was hardly any match against the very
strong leadership in the name of Narendra
Modi. What Congress needs is not
to think is about its national leadership,
but at the same time it also needs to encourage
state-level and local leadership.
Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra,
and Sonia Gandhi do not seem to be an
answer to Narendra Modi.
The NAYA Scheme 8 promised
by Congress failed to attract voters as it
came into being too late. Evidence from
the NES 2019 suggests that half of the
voting population had not even heard
about it until election day. Most of
those who would have been beneficiaries
and might have thought of voting
for Congress in anticipation of getting
this benefit had very little information
about this scheme. Where did the Congress
strategy fail? This has been meticulously
analyzed by James Manor in
his article “The Prospect of a Congress
Party Revival.”
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