image source, CONGRESS
Rahul Gandhi, a senior executive of the embattled opposition Congress, is in the midst of a solidarity drive known as the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The five-month journey across the country will begin in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumar and conclude in Jammu and Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, in February.
The BBC met Rahul Gandhi as he traveled through Vidarbha, an impoverished area in Maharashtra that regularly makes headlines for migrant suicides.
Amid a flurry of party women activists, queer rights groups and campaigners for old-age pensions, Rahul Gandhi said he was “trying to instill an alternative vision of India through this march.”
“With more activities, it has the potential to destroy the ruling BJP,” he added.
It was a statement that excited his supporters. But critics view it with skepticism. The Congress is currently in power in only two of India’s 28 states. This is a big fall for a party which was at the top as the largest party in the country.
The BJP has dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s activism as trying to fix a country that is not broken. But in the past 75-plus days, some Bollywood actors, many academics, activists, even opposition leaders from other parties who are staunch critics of the Congress have joined the rally in his support.
In Vidarbha, large party flags and big posters of Rahul Gandhi line the narrow local roads.
Hundreds of people, including youths, school children in uniform and dancers, lined up on both sides of the road, performing a traditional folk dance called Logium. As the rally passed through the villages, people waved from the rooftops of their houses. The party workers raised slogans in unison, “Nafrat Jodo, Bharat Jodo (Give up hatred, let’s unite India)”.
At the Congress party’s general meeting a day earlier, Rahul Gandhi had lashed out at the ruling party’s “politics of division”. More than one lakh people attended the meeting.
The BBC spoke to many ordinary people who traveled hundreds of kilometers and walked with Rahul Gandhi.
The Hyderabad-based management consultant, who voted for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 for the BJP, said he was there because of “disappointment” with the current government. A couple who ran an ice cream parlor in Pune staged a protest with placards against what they said was the politicization of Indian universities. Many of the villagers said they were interested in it because nothing much was done where they lived.
“I am here in the hope that this will spark the revival of India, which has lost its liberal, secular, inclusive and progressive values,” said Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, who spent the day at the rally.
Although much of the pro-BJP Indian media has not focused on the trip, it is evident that Rahul Gandhi has been able to draw large crowds in the five states he has traversed so far.
But there are questions about the Congress’ strength from the trip.
Will this help India’s oldest party, which has suffered some bad losses recently, get better electoral results? And will it change the criticism of Rahul Gandhi by his opponents that he lacks great political understanding?
image source, CONGRESS
Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi joined Rahul Gandhi in Maharashtra
“He is not a prince. That is the image created by his enemies. This march is trying to take that image-breaking campaign to the grassroots,” said Kanniya Kumar, former student leader and current Congress member. Kannaiya Kumar’s oratorical skills are used during the parade.
The Congress has often said that this is not an election-oriented rally. But Kanniya Kumar admitted that one of the reasons for undertaking this was to “re-establish an emotional connection with the electorate”. That is why Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly targeted the BJP in his speeches on the economy, prices, unemployment and farmer suicides.
Senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said grassroots engagement with party workers is leading to “organizational rejuvenation” of the Congress party.
Rahul Gandhi’s popularity ratings have seen a slight improvement from when he started the rally. In all the states he visited, people’s satisfaction with his performance increased by 3-9% from before the start, according to polling firm C-Voter.
But these small developments underscore just how much ground Modi has to gain to mount a serious challenge in the 2024 general elections.
Yashwant Deshmukh, founder-director of C-Voter, said the rally “helped fix Rahul Gandhi’s image in the southern states, which were not BJP strongholds. But converting that into votes will be a whole different game,” says Enek.
“There is also the question of whether his fan base will dwindle as he moves into India’s northern states or into the ‘Hindi region’, a stronghold of the ruling BJP,” he says.
Critics also doubt whether there will be immediate results due to the elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Whether the Congress will benefit from this in the long run will depend on “how well it can sustain this momentum once this march is formally over,” says former Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, who was suspended in 2020 for criticizing the party.
According to him, the Congress must simultaneously work on deeper issues like encouraging disaffected workers, reducing infighting and succession planning, and adopting a clear ideological stance beyond attacking the BJP.
Jha says party leaders should not be complacent about leaving to join the BJP and remove the “dynastic attraction” towards the Gandhi family.
Last month, the Congress appointed a non-Gandhi as its party president in 24 years. But Mallikarjune Kharge is widely seen as a loyalist and representative of the Gandhi family. Also, the party has been accused of marginalizing a broad talent base during internal party elections.
Against this backdrop, the BJP asks how Rahul Gandhi can unite India when he cannot hold his own party together.
However, political pundits insist that such an attempt is long overdue in the country to fill a growing vacuum on the opposition bench. This journey is not a magic wand. But it could be a significant first step in halting the Congress party’s steady decline since 2014.
“This revives the Congress as a serious opposition party in waiting and increases its power as a united opposition party,” says Mr Jha.
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