Bharat Jodo Yatra is just band-aid for existential crisis of Rahul and Congress

The Bharat Jodo Yatra launched by Rahul Gandhi, on Wednesday (September 7), from India’s southernmost point, Kanyakumari, is the biggest mass mobilisation and public outreach initiative launched by the Congress since the late Rajiv Gandhi’s Bharat Yatra of 1990. 

With the Congress battling for political survival and electoral relevance in the wake of mounting poll debacles for nearly a decade, the 3,570 km padyatra, Congress leaders hope, will bring both redemption and revival for the Grand Old Party.

Explained: 10 things about Congress’ massive foot march, Bharat Jodo Yatra

That Rahul is the mascot of the yatra is undeniable. Barring party leaders such as Pawan Khera and Kanhaiya Kumar, the 117 other yatris who will walk alongside Rahul for the entirety of the march – categorised by the party as Bharat Yatris, as opposed to the Atithi Yatris and Pradesh Yatris who will participate in the march for limited stretches – are not prominent faces and a majority of them have been sourced from Congress’ frontal organisations such as the Indian Youth Congress, the Seva Dal and the NSUI. 

It is clear that the party wants to use the publicity generated by the Yatra to boost Rahul’s flagging credibility as a viable alternative to Narendra Modi in the run-up to the all-important 2024 Lok Sabha polls

High on austerity

The yatra, in itself, is expected to be high on austerity – showcasing Rahul and his party as no different from the hoi polloi, subtly drawing on the imagery of historic mass movements such as Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March or even the late Chandra Shekhar’s Bharat Yatra of 1983 juxtaposed against the pomp and show of the several rath yatras that had defined similar outreach programmes carried out by BJP bigwigs, LK Advani onwards.

Also read: Padayatra politics, from Gandhiji to NTR, Advani, Modi and Rahul

Over the next five months, Rahul, along with volunteers drawn from the Congress and the civil society, will march towards Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir, covering a dozen states and two Union Territories en route. Rahul and the other padyatris will stay overnight in makeshift camps instead of hotels or resorts. Some 50 containers have been modified to accommodate four to five beds each; these will be ferried atop trucks while Rahul and the padyatris walk from city to city, interacting with citizens on issues ranging from deepening communal strife and economic challenges facing the country to the perceived assaults on the Constitution, constitutional institutions, principles of federalism, etc.  

Irony of optics

Yet, for all the pain that Rahul and the Congress are evidently taking in organising this grand walkathon, it is difficult to ignore the irony that the optics of the Bharat Jodo Yatra presents. Rahul launched the yatra from Kanyakumari after a stirring speech on what the Indian Tricolour truly stands for and the dire need to unite India against the divisive politics of the BJP and the undemocratic excesses that he charged the Modi government of. Other Congress leaders who spoke before him had echoed similar views and at least some of them hailed the Congress as the only political alternative to the BJP.

However, neither the Congress flag, nor its party symbol or the images of the party’s frontline leaders – including the Nehru-Gandhi family – dotted the stage or venue of the event that interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in her speech that was read out by Congress MP Amee Yajnik, dubbed as the start of a “transformational movement in Indian politics”.

Congress insiders say the decision to keep promotional material for the Bharat Jodo Yatra distinct from all symbols associated with the party was a conscious one as it was felt that doing so would encourage participation of those outfits – political or social – who are opposed to the BJP but not necessarily enamoured by the Congress or Rahul.

This may seem like pragmatic politics to some but it also shows a muted realisation within the Congress of its growing lack of acceptance across the country’s crowded political landscape that it once dominated. The Congress would surely hope that this perception changes as the Bharat Jodo Yatra trudges along.

Bumpy road ahead

It is no secret that for Rahul and his crisis-ridden party, the road to political salvation is way bumpier than the 3,570 km route that participants of the Bharat Jodo Yatra will now walk on. Sundry political parties and their frontline leaders have in the past marched various lengths and breadths of the country – or within states – to recover lost ground with varying degrees of success. Rahul and the Congress too are inheritors of this legacy.

Also read: Congress plans ambitious Bharat Jodo Yatra, but not without controversies 

However, what the Nehru-Gandhi scion needs to bear in mind is that embarking on yet another discovery of India alone won’t solve the crisis that the Congress faces both within and without. The symbolism of the yatra – one man fighting an ideological battle, often a lonely one as Rahul had himself said when he stepped down from the Congress presidency in 2019 – may bring good publicity to the 52-year-old leader, who the BJP undoubtedly goes to great lengths to discredit. 

But, incremental goodwill won’t resolve the existential crisis that Rahul and the Congress face today. For actual political gains, the gauntlet will need to be pushed beyond mere symbolism.

The challenges ahead of the Congress are many. The Congress’s electoral footprint is vastly diminished from the days that Rajiv took out his Bharat Yatra of 1990 while even at an organisational level, the party is deeply fractured with even the authority of the Gandhi family currently under challenge. 

The surprising exclusion of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh – two states bound for assembly polls later this year and where the Congress is struggling to not just defeat the ruling BJP but also prevent the AAP from usurping its space – from the main route of the Bharat Jodo Yatra has already raised eyebrows within the party units in these states with muted whispers among their leaders of Rahul abandoning them to fight the elections on their own strength.

As the BJP’s principal Opposition, the Congress has repeatedly failed to convince the electorate that it has not just a cogent narrative to counter one proffered by Modi but also the leadership to lead the country. A majority of the party’s existing regional allies see the Congress as a liability. Other regional outfits such as the AAP, TRS or TMC wish to expand their footprint at the cost of the Congress and have no love lost for the Gandhi family, particularly Rahul.

Socially, the Congress has lost large chunks of its caste and community based vote banks while its avowed ideological belief in secularism and plurality resonates far less in an India that has unquestioningly bought into the BJP’s majoritarian politics narrative. And then, as Rahul repeatedly declares at every rally or media interactions, the BJP has shown no hesitation in using constitutional institutions, central agencies and the media to undermine, intimidate and often vanquish its electoral rivals.

Jumbled litany of issues

In ‘Mile Kadam, Jude Watan’ (we march as one country), the Bharat Jodo Yatra may have a catchy tagline but the litany of issues that Rahul wants to highlight for the people while on his yatra also makes his narrative against the BJP a jumbled one. Besides, the yatra gives no glide path to a remedy for the organisational deficiencies within the Congress, several of which are a direct consequence of the way Rahul steered the party, both during his presidency and in the three years since he relinquished it in favour of a back-seat driving approach.

As such, while Rahul may have a personally enriching experience by interacting with the proletariat during the course of his five-month padyatra, there is little to suggest, at least for now, that his cross country walkathon will reinvigorate the party electorally.