#TheHindu #Editorial Rahul Gandhi in Lucknow

For a party perceived to be almost out of the fight in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election due in early 2017, the Congress is curiously the most scrutinised. It has also been the most splashy in showing its hand. In the past few weeks, it has appointed a new president for its Uttar Pradesh party unit, Raj Babbar, and announced its chief ministerial candidate, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. And on Friday, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi addressed party workers in Lucknow, saying the party would go it alone in the election and reach out to all sections of the electorate with a message of development. The effort clearly is to nominate itself as the party that would revive the State’s fortunes, reflected in the rallying slogan, “27 Saal, UP Behal”, a reference to the number of years since it was last in power in the State. The endeavour at saturation coverage bears the stamp of the Congress’s new strategist, Prashant Kishor. As the formidable election machines of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party get whirring, it will be interesting to see how, and if, the Congress manages to ride out its lack of organisational depth.

The Congress will be fighting this Assembly election from a position of historic disadvantage. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election it managed to win only two seats in the State, those of Mr. Gandhi and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, bringing its vote share down to just 7.5 per cent. In the 2012 Assembly elections it got a mere 28 seats in the 404-member House. In that sense, Mr. Gandhi’s fighting words that the party is in the hunt for a full majority is fanciful. But for the Congress to recover its traditional space as a crucial pole in India’s politics the election is vital, and such ambition is necessary to simply be in the fray. The road to revitalisation runs through the State, as Mr. Gandhi found in the 2009 Lok Sabha election with an unexpected haul. Moreover, getting the party’s voice heard in this four-cornered contest will allow it an opportunity to speak to the rest of the country, to answer difficult questions about its long-term strategy. But Uttar Pradesh needs a four-cornered argument too. For the past decade its voters have been yearning for options — they have given parties a chance with firm mandates, to the BSP in 2007 and the SP in 2012 in the Assembly, and the BJP in 2014 in Parliament. India’s social justice paradigm continues to be set here. In this State of grand social coalitions, the Congress’s task is, above all, to detail its vision of inclusive development as an alternative to the politics of spoils and majoritarian mobilisation currently on offer.

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