New Delhi: Another election, another defeat for the Congress! The only silver lining for the party, well it couldn't get worse. The grand old party, which has been in power in Delhi since 1998, would be hoping that Delhiites have given vent to their anger at the MCD level. Good, we now have a better chance at the Assembly level, when the level of anger would have reduced. But these could well end up being arguments offered by party's spin doctors. As frankly, the time has come for Congress to do a reality check.
Just look at Delhi! Most of my friends who come to the Capital from other cities are all praise for how Delhi has grown as a modern city. There are flyovers, better roads, air-conditioned buses and of course the Delhi Metro. All this has happened to the city where I was born in the past 10 years. Who has been in power in Delhi for the last 14 years? Congress! Who has been the Chief Minister of Delhi since 1998? Shiela Dikshit.
Now you look at my previous two lines together, if Delhi has indeed changed dramatically in terms of infrastructure, why has the party which has been in power here failed to encash it at municipality level?
Unlike say Mumbai, Delhi is a city which suffers from multiplicity of agencies. For instance you have the DDA (Delhi Development Authority which reports to the Urban Development Ministry), MCD which doesn't report to Delhi government, the Jal Board, responsible for providing water which reports to the Delhi government, the Delhi Vidyut Board etc.
So it has been possible for the Delhi government to pass on the blame for anything that's gone wrong on different agencies while taking full credit for whatever has worked in favour.
Loss of municipal elections in Delhi for the Congress must now be setting off the alarm bells. In 2010, for the first time, Congress lost control of the Bangalore municipality. Earlier this year, Congress failed to wrest Mumbai municipality from the Shiv Sena-BJP combine and now it has once again lost to the BJP.
Yes, it's also true that the Congress's performance at the level of Assembly and Lok Sabha has been markedly different. In 2004, Congress won six out of seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. In 2009, it made a clean sweep of all the seven. Shiela Dikshit herself has become almost unbeatable as a Chief Minister.
I think something seems to have changed for the Congress now. Since 2009, when the party came back to power at the Centre, it's been struggling to deal with scams and scandals.
To the urban classes, "scam" is a very dirty word. We hate it! Simple, we hate it because we feel the money that should have come to us has been pocketed by some greasy politician. So we wish to punish that politician.
But consider for a moment to what had happened in that 2009 Lok Sabha election itself. It was an election which was supposedly fought in the backdrop of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Rs 70,000 crore loan waiver scheme. It was widely believed that the Congress has got the support of the aam aadmi who lives in rural areas. It was argued that people in cities don't come to vote, so no point in pampering them.
To many within the BJP, this was the reason why they lost in 2004. In 2009, nine states with populations below poverty line (BPL) higher than the national average were Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Odisha and Tripura.
How did these nine states vote which account for an overwhelming majority of rural poor in the country? Out of 247 Lok Sabha seats just 63 for the Congress.
In the rest of the so called affluent states, Congress did much better, winning 143. It implies that the urban classes had voted for the Congress.
But with power, sometimes comes arrogance. That's what has happened to the Congress. If the party wants to stage a comeback, it needs its party president to take charge. It needs the Prime Minister of this country to come forward and lead by example. And if Rahul Gandhi believes that he indeed is a leader, it's time he showed some solid leadership. Else Congress's game may well and truly be up.
Comments
0 comment