Climbing Mount Gujarat, the Rahul Gandhi way

During a short but dramatic one-day visit to Gujarat, Rahul Gandhi reiterated what he had said in the Lok Sabha: the Congress would form the next government in the state in 2027. “They (BJP) have challenged us by ‘breaking’ our office; we are together going to ‘break’ their government here,” he said.

The statement was made on a day when the state BJP was holding its executive committee meeting and Union home minister Amit Shah was in town. At the meeting, time was spent analysing why the party lost the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat (the only seat to slip from the BJP in Gujarat in the last three parliamentary elections) to Geniben Thakor, a relatively ‘weak’ Congress candidate.

Resolutions were made to win ‘every booth’ in future elections. Former Congress state president, Arjun Modhwadia, who joined the BJP last year, dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s visit as inconsequential. So did other BJP leaders. Gujarat, they declared, would remain Fort BJP, if not Fort Modi.

Their confidence is not misplaced. The Congress has been out of power in the state for the past 29 years. Today, the party holds just 12 of the 182 Assembly seats; only two among the 37 MPs from the state belong to the Congress (one in the Lok Sabha). It does not control any of the seven municipal corporations or, for that matter, any of the 75 municipalities in the state or any of the 31 district panchayats. It is also out of power in 200 of the 214 taluka panchayats.

In the 2022 Assembly election, the BJP won 156 of the 182 seats. Since then, several MLAs from the Congress and AAP have defected to the BJP. (Media reports claim that, since 2007, over a hundred leaders from the Congress have joined the BJP.)

Even after winning the Assembly election, the BJP welcomed defections and embraced Modhwadia. The idea seems to be that both opposition leaders who cannot be defeated electorally, and opposition workers, must be co-opted into the party through incentives or intimidation.

“Nobody joins the ruling party out of love,” said a Congress leader who joined the BJP a few years ago. “Several factors, which vary from person to person, prompt these moves. However, the underlying factor is that in Gujarat, most politicians are businessmen. They make these decisions or cut deals to protect their business interests. Managing a business is impossible if you are not on the right side of the regime nowadays.”

This candid explanation explains the ‘Gujarat model’ that the BJP and PM Modi have now perfected across the country.

The Congress did manage to give the BJP a scare in 2017 when it bagged 77 seats in the Assembly as opposed to the BJP’s 99. The latter’s vote share was 49 per cent and the former’s over 41 per cent.

Rahul Gandhi told Congress workers that in 2022, the party had failed to put up a fight. Possibly because of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which coincided with the election that December. The yatra did not make its way to Gujarat, and both Gandhi and the party were missing in action. “In 2017, we seriously worked for only 3-4 months and yet came close to forming the government. This time, we have the next three years to prepare,” Gandhi said, adding that he was confident the party would defeat the BJP in 2027.

His visit drew a large number of Gujaratis from all walks of life, not just Congress workers. Journalists Nandini Oza and Deepal Trivedi concurred that they had never seen such a large turnout at the Congress office in the last two-and-a-half decades. In a video discussion, they also pointed out that Gandhi’s oratory had improved. “I discovered a story teller!” exclaimed Oza.

Horses for courses

Another segment of Rahul Gandhi’s address at Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan, the Congress headquarters in Ahmedabad, went viral, and this one related to the party’s shortcomings. A party worker, it seems, had expounded on the Congress’s mistake of deploying race horses at wedding receptions and wedding-worthy horses for electoral races.

This criticism was well taken, Gandhi said, and showed that Congress workers were unafraid to speak their minds to party leaders, while Team Modi did not have the guts to speak directly to him. “Un mein dum nahi hai!” he told the delighted party workers.

Veteran journalist Sheela Bhatt called it a “politically interesting speech, but sometimes while delivering ‘one-liners’, Rahul sounded as if he is overwhelmed by his own performance in the Lok Sabha election”.

‘Gujarat model’ to win polls

The ‘Gujarat model’, which the Congress will have to overcome if it is to win the next election, has been explained by political scientist Christoffe Jaffrelot in his new book, Gujarat under Modi: The blueprint for today’s India.

Jaffrelot points out that even after becoming Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi was not immediately successful in winning elections. In a bunch of bye-elections in February 2002, he was the only one from the BJP to win. The Godhra carnage later that month, which triggered mass communal violence, helped him weaponise communal polarisation as a means to reverse the BJP’s electoral decline and secure a two-thirds majority in December 2022.

This was followed by the swift ‘saffronisation’ of the police, bureaucracy and the judiciary, and a free hand being given to vigilante groups to act as moral police, run kangaroo courts and punish minorities, critics and dissenters.

The promotion of cronyism in the private sector was followed by promoting the cult around himself. Finally, Modi successfully marketed critics and opposition parties as anti-national, anti-development and anti-Hindu conspirators.

Elections speed up bullet trains

The Ahmedabad–Mumbai ‘Bullet Train’ will now be operational ‘ahead of the Gujarat Assembly election’ in December 2027 and only in Gujarat, according to unattributed sources in the National High Speed Rail Corporation. This after having failed to start operations by December 2023 — just ahead of the Lok Sabha election in 2024.

Even more astounding is the ‘news’ that the trial run over a 50-km stretch between Surat and Bilimora in Gujarat is expected to start in 2026. The 508-km rail corridor, slammed as unviable by experts right from the beginning, is now expected to be completed by the ‘second half of 2028’. The service is expected to reduce travel time between the two cities to three hours.

Currently, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Vande Bharat is the fastest train on the route, with a travel time of five-and-a-half hours. (Air travel takes about 95 minutes.) The original cost was estimated at Rs 1.08 lakh crore. Revised estimates remain a closely guarded secret.

Funded by a soft loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through Official Development Assistance (ODA), the revised and enhanced cost — due to delays caused by the pandemic and land acquisition issues in Maharashtra — is almost certain to be funded by budgetary support from the government of India and not through another loan.