Divided Opp still failing in its duty

The bottomline is that while the BJP has chalked out its agenda, the Opposition is still stumbling about

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be completing the first year of his second term in office on May 30. While critics are discussing the Modi Government’s report card, it makes one think about the Opposition’s  performance in the last one year. Has it played its role as the watchdog of democracy effectively? The answer is a resounding “no.”  Its performance has been lacklustre by and large, though to its credit some non-BJP parties did form the Government in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Delhi, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and  Jharkhand in the last one year. 

Even the main Opposition party, the Congress, has been ineffective in challenging the Modi Government because the grand old party itself is going through a leadership crisis. It is still groping in the dark for an effective political narrative and is facing an acute dearth of ideas. The Congress is in the process of rediscovering its identity and political relevance in the country.

There are various reasons for the Opposition’s ineffectiveness right now. The first is that the people gave Modi a huge mandate in 2019, even bigger than the one in 2014, when he came to power, ending 30 years of coalition politics in the country. But that should not be an excuse because the Opposition managed to bring down the Rajiv Gandhi Government in 1989 due to the Bofors imbroglio. In fact, Rajiv had come to power on a much more massive mandate — a whopping 415 seats out of 542 in 1984 while Modi’s BJP got only 303 seats in 2019. But there were many Opposition stalwarts like Indrajit Gupta, Somnath Chatterjee, AB Vajpayee, LK Advani and a few others who were able to hold the House to ransom on the Bofors issue and brought down the Rajiv Government. So the number game doesn’t apply to the present crisis in the Opposition. The issues and opportunities to hit the Modi Government were abundant in the last one year but the attacks by the Opposition were weak. For instance, many controversial laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act and the repeal of Article 370 and so on were pushed through by the Government despite Opposition protests inside Parliament and out of it. To make things easier for the Government, the Coronavirus outbreak pushed all other important issues, including the plight of the Indian economy, to the background. For the last five months nothing other than the pandemic is being discussed in the nation.  Unfortunately, without the Parliament, the Opposition has lost the opportunity to effectively highlight the plight of stranded migrant labourers in the country, though each party had raised the issue individually.

However, the most important factor weakening the Opposition is the lack of unity among the various parties. They failed to unite even on important issues like the CAA though some parties took to the streets. A shrewd politician like Modi was able to use this division successfully to get the controversial laws passed even in the House of Elders where the Government is still in a minority. Despite all these setbacks, the Opposition is not able to sustain its efforts at unity.  Nearly 22 Opposition parties attended the virtual meeting called by Congress president Sonia Gandhi last week. There were many such meetings in the past, too, but all efforts to unite the divided Opposition have failed so far because regional satraps have big egos and they are unwilling to set them aside.

Hence, the Opposition is divided and leaderless as the Congress, despite being the major national party, has not been able to take the lead. They are not able to agree on one leader with the stature to lead the Opposition. Stalwarts like Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad have taken a back seat now and though many senior regional leaders are amenable to attending meetings called by Sonia, they are reluctant to accept Gandhi’s leadership. Most importantly, the new generation of Opposition leaders has little or no connection with the people as the family fiefdom concept works only at the regional level. Plus, the Opposition does not have a single leader who can match the oratorical and persuasive skills of Modi, who continues to be popular because he has no opponent.

The bottomline is that while the BJP has chalked out its agenda, the Opposition is still stumbling about. It is high time it develops an effective strategy to challenge the Government. This is good for democracy.

(The writer is a senior journalist)