The Congress has also belatedly realised that cohabitation with the BJP dissidents—some of whom like former home minister Gordhan Zadafia were involved in the 2002 riots—did little to enhance the party's image among its core supporters. Second, in Saurashtra, on which the Congress had pinned most of its hopes, Keshubhai Patel's refusal to quit the BJP confused the Leuva Patels. It simultaneously created the impression that the Patels had become anti-BJP. This, a senior Congress functionary said, ensured that while the party did not benefit much from the Patels, its traditional voters among the OBCs—known in Gujarat as the Bakshipanch—deserted the party. Far from adding 20-odd seats to its '02 score, it lost three seats in this region.
And if the BJP in Gujarat was able to project both a leader and an ideology—Narendra Modi and Hindutva—the Congress failed on both counts. While no one was promoted as the party's choice for CM, signals were confused as far as ideology was concerned. A senior party leader told Outlook, "State leaders were insistent that neither Tehelka, nor the Sachar report nor reservation should figure in the speeches; it was only Sonia who attacked Modi frontally on the communal issue. This disconnect between state and central leaders, too, had its fallout."
In Gujarat, where the Congress was better-placed than it had been in many years, the mother-son duo drew big crowds but there was no organisation or strategy that could convert that into votes. Is this going to be the pattern in future elections as the Congress starts to vanish from different parts of the country? For Gujarat, it would appear, has now joined the list of states where the Congress has not been in power for over 15 years. If the party last won an election in the state 22 years ago in 1985, it has been out of power in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for the last 32, 18 and 17 years respectively. And in Tamil Nadu, it had its own government 40 years ago.
Does the party have the capacity to reinvent itself as the Congress's Group on Future Challenges has tasked itself to do? Group head Moily is now talking of recreating the Congress the way the Labour Party in Britain created New Labour in the early '90s. But it is hard to tell whether Gujarat will serve as a real wake-up call for a party characterised by intrigue, factionalism and nepotism.
Instead of winning Gujarat, and then taking on a vulnerable Left on the controversial nuclear deal, perhaps even calling for an early general election, the Congress stands exposed, at loggerheads with its chief supporter, the CPI(M), its own organisation in a shambles and the Nehru-Gandhis increasingly looking like mortals, with feet of clay.
The danger is: India Shining may be dead, but could Vibrant Gujarat grow into India Rising?
