Political chemistry changes... Modi’s halo of invincibility dims, Rahul sheds ‘Pappu’ tag for good

MANINI CHATTERJEE, TT, 12 Dec 2018, New Delhi: The contest for 2019 is no longer a one-horse race; it has been thrown wide open.

Less than six months before the general election, the BJP received its biggest setback since it came to power in 2014 just as the Congress got a major boost after being in steady decline in India's heartland states.

If Tuesday's results dimmed the halo of "invincibility" that Narendra Modi has worn for so long, it equally helped Rahul Gandhi shed the "Pappu" tag for good and emerge as a leader in his own right, ready to play a pivotal role as part of an Opposition phalanx in the battle ahead.

The significance of the results must be seen in the context of the BJP's record over the last four-and-a-half years.

Since 2014, the BJP juggernaut -- steered by the ModiAmit Shah duo --had seemed nearly unstoppable as it rampaged through the length and breadth of the country and won state after state.

It stuttered to a halt in some of the ruling party's bastions on Tuesday with the BJP facing a rout in Chhattisgarh, a decisive defeat in Rajasthan, and a steep decline in Madhya Pradesh.

The outcome is particularly galling for the Modi-Shah duopoly since the BJP was in direct contest with the Congress in all three states. It is thus not just an electoral setback but also an ideological defeat of their avowed goal of establishing a "Congress-mukt" Bharat.

For Rahul, the results are the best first anniversary gift he could have asked for. It was exactly a year ago that he took over as Congress president. 

Long dismissed as a reluctant politician with little appetite or acumen for the cut and thrust of a difficult vocation, Rahul has surprised friend and foe alike by displaying a new seriousness and -- more important -- doggedness in taking on the Prime Minister and the BJP.

As Congress president, he has shown a clarity of purpose that few would have credited him with earlier. In his mis- sion to take on Modi and puncture his larger-than-life image, Rahul single-handedly raised the issue of Rafale wherever he went.

Even while he focused on "bread-and-butter" issues facing the people (unemployment, farmers' distress, the demonetisation, corruption), he made the Congress much more open to forming alliances with anyone who was willing to come on board to challenge the BJP's hegemonic politics.

But his biggest achievement, perhaps, was ensuring that the perennially warring factions in the Congress state units came together to fight a united battle this time.

Since 2014, the Congress had won just two Assembly elections on its own, in Punjab and Puducherry. In Punjab, the victory was attributed to Captain Amarinder Singh and the main adversary was the Akali Dal and not the BJP.

Puducherry is much too small a state to count as a sign of resurgence. In Karnataka, the Congress showed unexpected shrewdness couched in magnanimity by offering the chief minister's post to the Janata Dal Secular and forming a coalition government even as the BJP was prematurely celebrating its emergence as the biggest party in the state.

But in no state had the Congress frontally taken on the BJP and won. That is why Tuesday's victory seems more spectacular than the actual numbers warrant.

Barring Chhattisgarh, where the Congress trounced the BJP despite the attempts of the Ajit Jogi-Mayawati alliance to turn it into a three-cornered contest, it barely managed to win Rajasthan and was caught in a see-saw battle with the BJP in Madhya Pradesh till late in the night.

Moreover, the Congress fared very poorly in Telangana and its gamble of joining hands with new ally Telugu Desam Party came a cropper. In Mizoram, it was routed by the regional Mizo National Front.