What Rahul's 'Bharat Nyay Yatra' will mean for a despondent Congress

With perceptible political gains made from the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) having waned since the 4,200 kilometre long foot march’s culmination in Srinagar on January 30 and the BJP, once again, electorally ascendant, the Congress party has decided to launch the second leg of the BJY, rechristened now as the Bharat Nyay Yatra, from January 14.

To be led again by former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, the BNY will be much grander in its scale compared to its original avatar, as it would traverse through 85 districts spread across 14 states between its launch from Imphal in Manipur and its conclusion in Maharashtra’s Mumbai on March 20.

However, unlike the BJY, which was a cross-country walkathon covering 75 districts across 12 states and two Union Territories, the BNY will be a “hybrid yatra”, covered for most part by bus, with foot marches planned for shorter stretches to ensure that Rahul’s renascent public outreach initiative covers a much larger political ground before it concludes just in time for the Election Commission’s announcement of the Lok Sabha poll schedule.

Yatra for justice

While finer nuances of the BNY are still being worked out by the Congress party, Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal announced on Wednesday (December 27) that the yatra will be flagged off by party president Mallikarjun Kharge from strife-torn Manipur. If the BJY stressed on the need for uniting a nation being visibly ripped apart by the BJP’s politics of polarisation – communal, cultural, regional, linguistic and economic; the BNY will revolve around a narrative of Nyay (justice) – social, political and economic.

Congress sources said the switch to pegging the forthcoming walkathon as one for justice from the previous one that was for unity is “deliberate and carefully thought out”, as it not only “broadens the canvas of issues that can be raised during the yatra but also, with its stress on social and economic justice, opens a gateway” for Congress allies in the INDIA bloc to join the mass outreach and mobilisation initiative ahead of the general elections.

While the BNY, like the BJY, is being touted to be a “non-political” yatra with the stated purpose of “rekindling a direct dialogue with citizens and raising their issues”, a senior Congress leader involved with the BNY’s planning told The Federal, “it would be pointless to launch something of this scale so close to the Lok Sabha polls without keeping electoral considerations in mind”.

The leader added, “Rahul first used Nyay as a major pivot of Congress’s political vision in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when our poll manifesto promised a ₹6000 financial assistance to a major section of the society but in the past five years, this pivot has seen several tweaks, which were evident in our poll guarantees in Karnataka, Telangana, Himachal and other states.. Now, by pushing the idea of Nyay to the front and centre of the yatra, we essentially want to ensure that every issue Rahul raised, be it during the BJY or in Parliament or during the recent assembly polls... addressing unemployment, bridging economic disparity, caste census, ensuring a level playing field for all political parties, preserving federalism or the freedom of expression... all these are married into the overarching theme of the Bharat Nyay Yatra.”

This line of thought is also evident from the states that the BNY would cover.

The north-east focus

The decision to launch the yatra from Manipur, a state still in the grip of ethnic unrest, has been taken with an eye on reviving the Congress’s electoral fortunes in its former strongholds of India’s north-east, which have, over the past decade, been painted saffron by Modi. The Congress also wants to keep alive its attacks on the Prime Minister and his party for wreaking chaos by their inaction and silence in Manipur, which witnessed unprecedented ethnic violence over six months ago and continues to be restive today.

Rahul was one of the first politicians to visit Manipur after the ethnic violence first broke out and a delegation of INDIA MPs had followed soon after. But Modi is yet to visit the state.

The BNY route

Through the two months of its course, the BNY will also cross Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, MP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat before it ends in Maharashtra. Of these states, Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan and a very limited stretch of UP were covered during the BJY, drawing sharp criticism from many political observers about Rahul “deliberately skipping” the states where the Congress was either too weak or where the electoral landscape was dominated by the party’s former, current and future regional allies.

Several of these states have, over the past decade, witnessed unprecedented spikes in unemployment, social unrest and communal polarisation. Others, particularly Opposition-ruled Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, have also been vocal protestors against the BJP-led Centre’s alleged assaults on federalism and misuse of central investigation agencies against political rivals.

Both MP and Maharashtra also saw the toppling of Congress or Opposition-led government by the BJP over the past three years. The BNY will, expectedly, raise each of these issues as it progresses.

BJY impact

Ever since the BJY concluded in Srinagar, demands for its reboot had been made by various sections within the Congress. Though Rahul, through his impromptu visits to various localities in Delhi and to towns and villages around the national capital during which he interacted with a cross-section of people, signalled that the culmination of his padyatra in Srinagar had not put an end to his quest for rediscovering India, there had been no clarity, until now, on whether a BJY 2.0 would indeed happen,

Congress sources said that though there was no denying that the BJY had played a crucial role in revitalising an otherwise despondent party and helped Rahul break out of the image trap of an insincere, cavalier and transient politician, these gains had flat-lined over the past few months since Congress leaders, across most states, failed to keep up the momentum that the party had gained from the Kanyakumari to Kashmir march.

The Congress’s unexpected poll rout in the Hindi speaking states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh (the BJY had spent 10 days in MP and 16 in Rajasthan) earlier this month left no doubts about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP aggressively regaining its foothold in the Hindi heartland north of the Vindhyas, which also constitutes a bulk of the Lok Sabha’s seats.

Second yatra timing

Yet, despite an overwhelming section of the party demanding Rahul to reboot BJY, several party veterans like Mukul Wasnik and Ramesh Chennithala, reportedly were unsure of whether it would be wise for the Congress’s principal mascot and conscience keeper to commit over two months of his time to another gruelling yatra so close to the Lok Sabha polls; more so when the Opposition’s INDIA bloc is yet to take its final shape and structure.

At the CWC meet convened by Kharge earlier this month, Wasnik and Chennithala, alongwith a few other members had aired their reservations against a BJY 2.0 prompting strong rebuttals by other leaders, said sources.

Rahul, it is learnt, has indicated to party leaders who harboured reservations against launching a second yatra that though he may be away from Delhi for two months, he will remain accessible to party colleagues and allies alike, if and when his views are required for any matter regarding the Congress or the INDIA bloc. More importantly, he is learnt to have stressed that it is Kharge, who as Congress president, will hold fort on tricky negotiations of the INDIA coalition as well as lead the party’s charge in Parliament when it convenes in February for its final session before the Lok Sabha polls.

Blunting Modi's polarising narrative

With the inauguration of Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir scheduled for January 22 and the BJP planning a long-drawn out political jamboree to cash in on the Hindutva hysteria that the consecration of the temple is expected to trigger across the saffron bastions of the Hindi heartland, the Congress believes Rahul’s BNY has the potential to blunt at least part of the uptick in Modi’s polarising and jingoistic narrative.

“The BJP will use the Ram Mandir to keep communal polarisation and Hindutva at the forefront of its campaign. With the BNY, we can build our counter-narrative by ensuring that issues like unemployment, price rise, cronyism under the BJP regime, the ethnic violence in Manipur, the suspension of Opposition’s MPs for demanding answers on Parliament’s security breach, assaults on federalism and constitution, social disharmony, caste census, and so on, do not get swept out of public consciousness," a Congress general secretary told The Federal.