Opposition unity does not have a long shelf life

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressing other Opposition leaders amid the Monsoon Session of Parliament (Image: Twitter/@RahulGandhi)

The sheer sight of a flurry of meetings, joint protests inside and outside Parliament and expressions of clear intent of facing electoral challenges together may make one think that India’s political parties in the opposition have finally got their act together.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too may have assessed these efforts quite seriously and have started work on ways to counter bids to corner Prime Minister Narenda Modi and pose a big challenge before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

But how effective will these efforts be by the opposition parties? Can they actually sit together after forgetting their individual ambitions, egos and domination of their respective turfs to let a true alternative emerge to Modi and the BJP?

These questions will be asked as this tumultuous session Parliament ends and the parties return to focus on the next round of assembly elections in 2022.

Winning each of these polls is, of course, crucial for the BJP and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). But these polls are also very important for the leading opposition parties if they have to set the narrative in their favour.

These opposition parties will have to go beyond the current anti-BJP plank and speak out on larger issues of governance and an alternative model of governance beyond populism and welfarism to catch the imagination of voters across India.

More importantly, these parties would have to also compete with the new approaches of the BJP to expand its social base, focusing exclusive attention on the Scheduled Castes (SCs), the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

Burdened with a string of poll setbacks in recent years, the Congress has often been seen as the elephant in the room by many Opposition leaders. After the 2019 poll debacle, Rahul Gandhi quit as Congress president. Since then the party has not had a full time president. However, today, Rahul Gandhi’s command and grip over the party, along with his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, has only increased, with his mother Sonia Gandhi at the helm as an interim chief. His confidence in the future of the Congress stems from his belief that Modi's 'magic’ is over.

That is why on August 3, for the first time, Rahul Gandhi chaired a breakfast meeting in Delhi in what was seen as his readiness to be the face of the opposition against Modi.

He did so in the backdrop of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee making a trip to Delhi to register her importance following her stunning return to power in West Bengal for a third time. She made no bones about her importance because a massive BJP campaign against her and her party, the Trinamool Congress, crumpled without a trace.

Interestingly, on July 28, Banerjee called on Sonia Gandhi after six years. During their last meeting in 2015, Banerjee was said to have been countered by Sonia Gandhi when she had suggested that the Congress must not insist on leading a combined opposition to Modi for the 2019 polls. At that time, apparently Sonia Gandhi said that the Congress could not abdicate its role as the main opposition to the BJP. A disappointed Banerjee did not pursue the matter further with the Gandhi family and we all know the 2019 poll results. Since the 2019 polls, the Congress may have shrunk in political size but it is certainly in no mood to concede its role in order to defeat the Modi-led BJP at the hustings.

Like Banerjee, National Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar is another leader who has kept his fellow opposition leaders guessing. On a day his daughter Supriya Sule attended the breakfast meeting hosted by Rahul Gandhi, Pawar was meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah to discuss the fate of the sugar industry because Shah had just become the minister of the newly-created ministry of cooperation.

A test case for the Opposition lies in Uttar Pradesh where the assembly polls are expected to be a Yogi Adityanath-led BJP versus the rest. After the 2017 drubbing when the Samajwadi Party (SP), and the Congress were in a grand alliance (and in 2019 when the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) joined hands), neither SP leader Akhilesh Yadav nor BSP chief Mayawati have shown any inclination for a similar tie-up or to involve the Congress in any alliance. Priyanka Gandhi, who is the face of the Congress in UP, has realised that it may not be prudent to go it alone — but the search for partners remains elusive.

The Pegasus snooping controversy, farm Bills and price rise may have forged a not-so-rare unity among most opposition parties — but beyond the current stalemate in Parliament, it does not promise longevity and strength.