The Congress approach to the Uttar Pradesh elections has been baffling, to say the least. Three months before elections, the young man who should be the general marshalling his forces on the electoral battleground, is nowhere to be seen. His larger-than-life Gandhi family persona is smaller than a dot in the state’s crowded political landscape. Rahul Gandhi’s politics is still about finding his way in the maze of by-lanes that crisscross a rather impoverished Amethi and Rae Bareilly.

Apparently, he is meeting functionaries, confabulating with advisors — Congress never had a scarcity of omniscient armchair pundits — but except for a few rallies in Bareilly and Kanpur, the UP electorate has not yet been blessed with his darshan and personal appearances. There are fears now that the young politician is becoming a card that will never be unraveled from the inner folds of an untidy sleeve. The Congress will hide him for fear of failure. Rahul Gandhi will continue to play hide and seek — more hide than seek.

The Gandhi muddle apart, the Congress has not really worked hard to confront and alter the calcifying caste arrangement. Three years after it unexpectedly captured the Delhi throne and realised the need to consolidate in UP, the Congress has had several false starts but never really been able to take off. The result is all too visible. There has been little or no grassroots growth of the party’s support base. The UP elections will be predictably fought on two tiers — Samajwadi Party versus the Bahujan Samaj Party at the backward level and BJP versus the Congress for the numerically less significant and much-divided upper caste votes. In a state where politics of caste identification has deflated and displaced other issues, the Congress could have systematically attempted an alternative formula.

... contd.