Lok Sabha Election 2024: 'Has the narrative changed?' | R.K. Radhakrishnan explains

hi and welcome to Frontline conversation when the Congress Manifesto or the Nay Patra was released days ahead of the first phase of polling of the 2024 Loa election it received limited traction mostly in the form of social media reactions and routine coverage in the mainstream media but it became a full-fledged election issue only when prime minister Narendra Modi attacked the manifesto alleging that it had a maest mindset and the Muslim League imprint on it since then the Congress is going all out to promote its n Patra and its five main guarantees other opposition parties also seem to have taken a queue from the Congress and begun attacking the BJP on local issues which is not exactly the pitch that the bjp's Modi Centric election campaign is geared to this has resulted in something we haven't witnessed in almost a decade that for once the opposition is dictating The Narrative of this election pushing PM Modi and the BJP onto the back foot will this have any impact on the election results come June 4 joining me today to talk about this is my colleague RK radakrishnan senior associate editor at Frontline thank you for joining us AR pleasure for the first time since perhaps 2014 we are witnessing a coordinated attempt by the political opposition to come together and put up a fight against the ruling BJP do you agree with this observation and what do you make of this strategy behind this see in 2014 the scene was completely different everybody wanted the UPA to give way to the BJP and its allies basically NDA now at that point it was very clear the momentum was very clear it was the NDA it was the BJP there is no two ways about it and we saw how the UPA literally crumbled in front of uh uh the BJP and now what we see is completely different from the scene that we saw in the next loab election 2019 when we saw all the political parties uh in the opposition space trying to become uh all had a prime minister candidate everybody wanted to become Prime Minister we saw that NCP Chief sharat PA wanted to become the chief minister we saw uh demands that m should be made uh the Prime Minister we saw that uh you know akiles Yad wanted to be the Prime Minister every single candidate barring say MK tent in Tamil Nadu everybody else was in that space was in the running for the chief minister so what happened as a result is that within the opposition space there was so much of disunity parties did not Ally with each other and finally the entire election went the Modi way there was obviously a slight Modi wave also happening so you saw 350 seats 50 plus seats for the India at that point of time now what has happened is that finally uh in 5 years all the political parties have been decimated to one level or the other so after that what has happened is a bat J yatra by the congress party leader Rahul Gandhi and then there is the Barat J NRA by the same person now through these two yatras Congress has proved that it does have enough people on the ground to fight an election this was the confidence booster and strategy wise this was one of the best strategies that the Congress has ever come up with to show to the other political parties not to the BJP BJP is very strong on the ground to show to the other political parties that it is a viable combination and that the Congress should be the party which is leading the formation on the ground and that is exactly what is happening this was the first part of what the Congress got right the second part of what Congress got right was in the way that it went around uh you know collecting the allies and finally naming them as uh first thing Congress came down from the pedestal in fact in 2019 one of the uh complaints that akiles had was the SP Chief akiles had was that look nobody's willing to talk to me nobody is from the Congress is coming to will coming to sit down and talk to me but that has changed completely SP and Congress have an alliance rjd and Congress have an alliance DMK and Congress have an alliance so this allies are all you know in the regions now the next uh good thing or rather uh smart thinking on the part of this particular Alliance was to name it India now India you can't get away from the fact that it is called India right I mean that is why we keep hearing more about bhat these days and not India and you have to be especially Petty to say that this is Indie Alliance the Prime Minister the home minister every single spokes person of the btia janata party is saying that this is Indie Alliance because you know the last word stands for last alphabet stands for Alliance now let us use this Logic for NDA and also BJP if you use this for the BJP it becomes BJ party we know all what that means and when you use this for the NDA it becomes ND aliance now not one single Congress leader or anybody in the opposition ranks to their credit have ever used any of these obnoxious phrases to refer to either the BJP or the NDA I think the credit should go to the uh congress party and the all the other opposition parties for having taken this high moral ground and not giving way to this uh to react to this Indie Indie comments right from the Prime Minister mind you the third part of what the Congress got right is what Rahul Gandhi did in whyard in 2019 when Rahul Gandhi went to file his nomination in vard there were two kinds of flags one was the Congress Flags the other was the Indian Union Muslim League flag now Indian Union Muslim League flag was misinterpreted by the uh largely by uh you know nationalistic it sales as these are the Pakistani flags and uh we saw you know some corrections uh being done all over the place and Congress trying to counter it and all that and it was a mess and the fact the message that you know Rahul Gandhi and pakistanis are in uh are together in this particular election fight went around the whole country spread like wildfire this time around the congress's smart strategy I wouldn't say that this is the morally right strategy but then congress's smart strategy what they did no Flags during nomination there was not a single Congress flag there is not a single iuml flag during that entire procession which came in for criticism obviously it can came for criticism from the left parties because left parties are ruling Kerala at this point of time they are the principal opposition to the UDF which is the Congress UDF in Kerala and they tried to I mean the BJP also tried to make this an issue at the national level but it did not uh you know carry much weight so congress's next biggest success was to ensure that there is no element of Pakistan or green which can be misinterpreted as a Pakistan flag anywhere in the vicinity of Rahul Gandhi at all the other strategy which uh Rahul Gandhi did was throughout the campaigning in vard and in Kerala and in Tamil Nadu he did not mention if he will be contesting a second seat and this largest was made possible because of a BJP strategic mistake what was that mistake not holding the elections at the same time to R and A and some of the other conses where Rahul Gandhi has a chance of contesting along with that of why not so when they didn't do that Rahul Gandhi had the luxury of not telling the people of vard not telling the people of Kerala that he might contest from a second seat this second seat came only much later when he went to uh Rial now the uh the congress's strategy it literally peaked in that particular uh you know contest I would say because everybody expected him to contest from amti and then you know smti Rani would have given real tough uh you know contest in that particular constituency now it in in a very strategic moood they moved to uh they moved Rahul to r b and then uh you know uh the contestant in am was somebody who was connected with the Congress but at the same time not a prominent figure now because of this the entire media space is now being taken by what is happening in other places and not what is happening in am so smti rani's complete I mean publicity was for smti Rani the oxygen with which she literally lives and breaths now she was denied of that oxygen and you know somebody like Mr EML Sharma is not the greatest of personalities to put on television so uh there is literally no media not National coverage in m at the same time there is some coverage in riber and the other places where Rahul Gandhi is contesting so I think strategy wise a lot of things for the went right for the Congress and some of the things I have listed but then yeah the other part of the story is that they were willing to also uh be the junior partner in a lot of places which was not the case earlier of course people will say that does Congress have a choice it has to go down because you know it doesn't have people on the ground it doesn't have mlas on the ground so on and so forth but Congress could have stubbornly said look without us there is no opposition we are the leader of the opposition and all of that but Congress did not do any of that even with rjd or with ESP or the other political parties what they did is completely they decided that uh you know we will go by what uh rjd says what SP says and what not of course there will be tough negotiations in uh we have seen that with the DMK as well in the case of the DMK as well DMK initially was prepared to offer them only five seats now uh how did it become 10 seats it's a miracle so to speak but then Rahul Gandhi has worked with charm on MK Stalin the chief minister to the extent that MK Stalin feels it necessary to uh concede 10 seats for the Congress which is not a huge force in Tamil Nadu at all so a strateg wise if you look at uh the entire the manner in which uh the opposition has conducted itself I think that this is the only election in the past 10 years where there has been a fight and the fight is on and we've seen that in various levels in all the faes so far what is the future of the opposition and what does it mean for the ongoing 2024 Loa election right now it is very clear unless the opposition is together there is not going to be an opposition left after this election so this is one thing that the opposition itself is very aware of and it has been speaking in very uh very publicly in fact uh Rahul Gandhi has been talking about this being the last election to save Constitution democracy and all of that upholding the uh copy of the Constitution and that has uh of course been uh a sore point for the BJP because the BJP is uh trying to tell people at what point did we say we change we will change the Constitution and there are uh people within the BJP contesting as MPS who have said that we need 400 seats to change the Constitution and to make this Hindu rashtra and whatnot I think the opposition realizes this very well and there is no future for the opposition if uh they are uh if the BJP uh becomes the single largest party uh or if the BJP crosses the 272 the uh Mark the halfway mark in uh the Lo SAA when the Congress Manifesto was released it uh seemed that people were not particularly interested in it but it began gaining traction on the ground when PM Modi decided to rake it up in his election speeches should the Congress be sending the Prime Minister a thank you card no I think we all should send the Prime Minister a thank you card because for once at a national level manifestos are being talked about uh there I mean every single time in Tamil Nadu in Kerala and a lot of other states manifestos are talked about what are the promises being made are the promises being kept for example in Karnataka now this uh the money the uh women getting their uh uh you know monthly kind of uh Advan kind of salary kind of of thing is is happening there is also free bus rights and they are giving progress reports on all of these things that is the important thing in a Manifesto and I think both the Congress Manifesto and the BJP Manifesto are for us tools to understand where these political parties are taking this nation forward in that context we see that the Congress Manifesto again to explain to the people is a 48 page Manifesto where GST uh is uh mentioned at 14 places jobs are mentioned in 36 places I think these two are the important criteria because GST is actually strangling businesses across the country and jobs are the critical things in India today given that youth unemployment as the highest level since Independence at the same time bjp's Manifesto is a 76 page Manifesto where jobs appear only twice and GST is appearing only Thrice and again you go to reservation uh Congress it is present six times and they make the commitment uh to reservation uh for people who are minorities at the same time also uh you know women and children and all of that and the kind of uh you know schemes that they talk of is much more elaborate than what we see in the BJP Manifesto where reservation the word reservation appears twice inflation appears once in the BJP Manifesto and Thrice in the Congress Manifesto Jammu and Kashmir appears one each time in both these uh manifestos equality one time in the BJP Manifesto Thrice in the Congress Manifesto uh Manipur doesn't appear in the BJP Manifesto at all but the congress makes it a point to include it twice and speak about Manipur and say what will do once they come to par at the central level uh Muslim appears once in the BJP Manifesto not in the Congress Manifesto at all and this has been a point of contention because the Prime Minister has been saying a lot of things in the Congress Manifesto and then linking it to Muslims uh lgbtq it doesn't appear in the uh BJP Manifesto at all and uh appears in the Congress Manifesto at least Thrice social justice is mentioned in four places in the Congress Manifesto doesn't find mention in the BJP Manifesto at all and I think this these are the main differences and I think the focus on the manifesto is extremely important for the people to understand what the policies are and I thank the P prime minister at a very personal level and I think we all have to thank the Prime Minister send him cards or fls or whatever he likes the opposition particularly the Congress may have set the narrative in this general election with their campaign but is there anyone in the opposition who has shown the same kind of hunger for power at the national level as the present ruling dispensation see there are ways to look at uh how much a politician is hungry after power this you can only discern when you know what kind of institutions of uh democracy have these people strangulated now we have seen that in Tamil Nadu we have seen that with J the kind of control she had over the state control control over institutions of governance she had over the state uh and the kind of power that she exercised over these uh you know structures of governance we see the same thing in Delhi uh with both the Prime Minister uh Narendra Modi and with the home minister Amit sha the kind of control they have exercised on the election commission it it appears as if the fifth phase for instance take take the case of the fifth phase 49 constituencies are going to the polls you know a large state in India has minimum of 40 constituencies Tamil Nadu for instance has 39 constituencies uh Maharashtra has 48 constituencies it is easy for you know 50 constituencies or 100 constituencies to go to uh polls at the same time why are you holding only 49 constituencies and if few in Maharashtra uh if few in uh up if few in Bihar and uh lay in uh Jammu and Kashmir what is the justification to not hold the jnk uh you know the entire election in Le and Jammu and Kashmir the valley and jamu all together what is the justification for that what is the ification in moving uh huge number of forces from uh say Maharashtra to across to odisa I don't understand the logic of this at all so what I see is that it is almost as if the BJP desired that the elections be conducted in a certain way that ATI R and LNO and places like that go to you know polls only on a particular date and it seems as if the election commission has obliged to that so I see the kind of control that the BJP has exercised on uh media of course uh apart from the election commission the media is completely the number of interviews the Prime Minister has given some 44 interviews to channels not one channel not one newspaper has asked one critical question of the Prime Minister when he pushes back on electoral bonds and say this is the most transparent way of funding they didn't ask why is it that somebody who gives uh money to your party suddenly gets bailed they didn't ask why sudden somebody who gives money to your party suddenly gets a project and there are too many you know too many coincidences too many times to for this to be a one-off thing or for this to be a coincidence we have also seen the kind of uh influence the kind of uh people being arrested by the Ed or the CBI uh or by any of the enforcement agencies the prime minister's explanation is that of the 6,000 cases that the Ed has registered and brought money so far only 147 or 49 is against politicians my question is uh journalist should have asked this definitely of the 149 how many are BJP men I'll tell you today it's zero and that is the problem uh with the prime minister's interviews as well so he has complete control over the media he has complete control over the institutions of governance he has complete control over all the uh you know enforcement uh agencies as well so I think this kind of control over all these bodies doesn't a well for Indian democracy and that is a problem and we have not seen this happen from 1947 at all thank you so much for joining us today RK that's all we have in this edition of Frontline conversations stay tuned and we'll be back soon with another video for more such content please subscribe to our YouTube channel

Channel: Frontline Magazine

Views: 9,258

Keywords: lok sabha election 2024, 2024 general election, congress, congress manifesto, nyay patra, rahul gandhi, narendra modi, bjp, modi ki guarantee, INDIA bloc

Id: 31UBjBc_8OI

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024