Safe seat for Rahul Gandhi from South India is pragmatic politics

Rahul Gandhi is about to make the smartest decision of his political life by contesting from a safe seat in India. He is about to implement the biggest lesson of warfare: when defeat is inevitable, survival is at stake and an aggressive enemy is closing in, flee to a safe haven. For, even Lord Krishna would have agreed that desertion is the better part of valour.

For the past two days, the Congress has been claiming its state units in the southern states want Gandhi to contest from one of the parliamentary constituencies there. Its Kerala unit has gone ahead and announced his candidature from Wayanad, considered a party bastion.

Though the Congress is trying to portray Gandhi’s hunt for a seat in the south as an aggressive act aimed at mobilising the cadre in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the timing of the purported decision shows Gandhi is making a tactical retreat. His family’s bastion Amethi, it is clear from ground reports, is under serious threat from the BJP. Gandhi has no option but to turn run, even if his rival Smriti Irani taunts her with a brutal hashtag.

Those who know Indian mythology would recall Indian deity Krishna is considered the pioneer of the art of making a tactical retreat from a difficult battle. It is believed that when a huge army led by Jarasandh, the king of Magadha, surrounded Mathura, the seat of the Yadavas, Krishna shifted the capital to Dwaraka to avoid huge losses and a certain defeat. For running away from an advancing army, he earned the moniker of Ranchod.

Gandhi is facing a similar putsch led by the BJP’s Smriti Irani this election. In 2014, Gandhi managed to retain Amethi by a slender margin of around one lakh votes. His vote share plummeted from 71.78% in 2009 to a mere 36.71%. In the 2017 assembly polls the Congress slid further, losing all the five seats in Amethi by huge margins, four of them to the BJP.

While the Congress was slipping on its own turf, the BJP spent five years planning its 2019 campaign. In spite of the loss, it first raised Irani’s profile by giving her charge of the Human Resources Department. On her party, Irani ran a sustained campaign in Amethi aimed at reaching out to voters through several welfare schemes. She was helped by the Centre through various schemes, the latest being the “inauguration” of an ordnance factory by Prime Minister Narendra Modi just before the announcement of elections.

As a result, Amethi is ready to flip for the BJP and end its three-decade relation with the Congress that began with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to nurse Amethi as his constituency. The buzz on the ground is that Modi’s popularity, Irani’s sustained campaign and the Congress chief’s tactical errors will help the BJP.

Awdhesh Kumar Shukla, 60, a resident of Tarsara village in Amethi, argues that Gandhi will lose the election. He lists several additional factors that are helping the BJP: India’s retaliatory strikes after the terror attack on a BSF convoy in Pulwama, the government’s direct transfer of cash to farmers, improved supply of electricity, free connections to poor households and the PM’s special scheme that helps local bodies build houses for the poor with Central assistance.

Nandkishore Tripathi, a 70-year-old social activist from Musafirkhana tehsil of Amethi, is a traditional supporter of the Samajwadi Party. On March 3, when Modi came to Amethi to “inaugurate a factory for manufacturing Kalashnikov rifles” he noticed a trend that had died with former PM Rajeev Gandhi. “People were coming on their own to see Modi from areas far away. Their enthusiasm was spontaneous. I see trouble for the Gandhis,” he says.

One of the reasons behind the Congress president’s electoral victories since 2004 was the goodwill his father had earned in Amethi. To repay his debt, people continued to vote for the Congress even when it was being squeezed out of UP. But, the generation that felt a debt towards the Gandhis has gradually faded away, replaced by youngsters who now ask what exactly has Rahul done for them to deserve another chance. As Tripathi, known as Nanda Baba in the area asks, “Till when can we carry the son on our shoulders because of his father?”

Obviously, Amethi is no longer safe for the Gandhis. The best the Congress can do in these hard times is sell necessity as a virtue, label Gandhi’s retreat as an aggressive act of southward expansion, a quest for lebensraum for the Congress, a generous gesture by a leader in huge demand by its state units. But, the problem with Gandhi is that his every act is seen through the prism of his personality. In 2014, when Modi had contested from two seats, Varanasi and Vadodara, it was labelled an act of courage, another manifestation of ‘56-inch’ brand of daredevilry. With Rahul, it would be seen as an act of cowardice, a damning escape from a tough battle.

Unfortunately, Gandhi, like Krishna, has no other option but to run. Cruel hashtags will, of course, follow. But, he will at least live to fight another battle.