STOOPING TO CONQUER

Congress kept its ear and feet to the ground to script a remarkable resurgence

- SONI MISHRA

For the Congress, and to a great extent the other parties in the INDIA alliance as well, the most memorable sound of the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections would be “khata khat”. Rahul Gandhi first uttered it in a public meeting in Anupgarh in Rajasthan on April 11, ahead of the first phase of polling. Talking about the Congress’s poll promise of giving 8,500 a month to women of poor families, he said the money would land “khata khat” into their accounts, month after month.

“Khata khat” soon took on a life of its own, with party workers cheering in anticipation during Rahul’s speeches when he was about to say it. Allies adopted it and remodelled it. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav added a line saying the voters would ensure that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party would be out of power “fata fat” (quickly). Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav added his own twist: “Mahaul tana tan, BJP safa chat” (the ambience is exhilarating and it shows the BJP will be wiped out). Modi, too, joined the party, saying “the INDIA bloc will break up khata khat”.

The poll pledge was in alignment with the Congress’s assessment that livelihood issues such as unemployment and inflation were important on the ground and would come into play in the absence of any other overarching sentiment. It conveyed to the voters the idea that the Congress’s priority was the underprivileged who are the majority of the population in contrast to what it claimed was the scenario under the Modi rule that fostered the prosperity of a chosen few.

With the Congress emerging as a much bigger force in the Lok Sabha, one shy of the three-digit mark, the result is seen as a validation of Rahul’s leadership. In fact, the Rahul that this election saw was a project that had begun in October 2022, when he had started his Bharat Jodo Yatra, a 4,000-kilometre walkathon from Kanyakumari to Srinagar.