The day the current Congress leadership boarded a flight to embark on the first leg of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, there was a high profile exit on ground. Milind Deora, the former MP from South Mumbai and more important a high profile second generational Congress leader quit the party. Again, like most of the recent exits like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, RPN Singh, Sushmita Dev, Ashok Tanwar this one too is someone who was at one point, a key member of Team Rahul. In fact more than the others, Milind and Rahul had a personal equation that predated both of them joining politics. His exit must have hurt more than the others.
Since then, Milind has joined Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. He has cited many reasons for quitting, some of these are personal, he was wary of the Congress alliance with Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena which gave away his South Mumbai seat to the allies as it was already occupied by a Uddhav Sena MP. He has been criticized for putting his personal gain above the interests of the party, but then isn’t that why most people actually join politics? To win elections? They may claim that their motives are noble, that they are in it to help others, which may be the case, but it is definitely not the entire story. Moreover, if all they want to do is charity work, then, there are NGOs for that. Though one can see how ambition can be a bad word in a party where the leader once proclaimed, Power is Poison.
However, Deora’s other concerns are much more important. I recall sometime after the 2014 loss (when the UPA was voted out) he gave me an interview on NewsX, where he pointed out that the Congress needed a credible narrative of its own. It needed to do more than just criticize the Prime Minister. Elections are not won on negative narratives but on positive promises, and the voter needs to know what the Congress stands for. After the 2019 loss, Milind had also tweeted that Rahul Gandhi needed to change his board of advisors as he was clearly not getting the right advice. This was not taken kindly by the darbaris at 12 Tughlaq Lane and Milind slowly paid the price for speaking his mind.
Shooting the messenger is now a fulltime occupation for Rahul Gandhi’s coterie of advisors.
One can see this with Deora’s exit for there is little doubt that he was edged out; one can see this with the sidelining of Shashi Tharoor (if he quits then the Congress will lose an articulate face that connects well with middle-class Bharat); and one can see this in the promotion of various rootless leaders that boarded that flight along with Rahul Gandhi. Infact the joke on social media that day was, was the plane was a Boeing 737 Max 9 that had more than one door opening! (For the buffs, it was an Airbus, perhaps chosen for that very reason as the Congress wanted to minimize the number of exit doors!!).
All those who have quit have done so for reasons that are both personal and professional : they don’t see any viable future for themselves, and for the party. Both these should worry the Congress leadership. Its not just the Congress that is taking on the BJP, there are other opposition parties as well. But none is seeing this kind of exodus. And the reason for this is that other opposition parties offer some hope at the state level. They are in fact all regional parties with the exception of Aam Admi Party and don’t stand to lose much if Modi returns back to power at the centre, so long as they remain in power at the state level. Such as the RJD & JD(U), TMC & DMK. Even the NCP and Uddhav Thackeray could live with Modi at the centre so long as they get back the state. The only party that will be threatened existentially is the Congress and perhaps the Aam Admi Party, simply because Arvind Kejriwal carries a permanent chip on his shoulder. Today he is upset with the BJP; tomorrow he will be upset with the Congress.
Ofcourse the irony that there was a Congress Todo (exit) on the very day he set off on the second leg of Bharat Jodo must not have been lost on Rahul Gandhi. It certainly wasn’t lost on Jairam Ramesh who accused the Prime Minister of headline management in the timing of Deora’s exit. Though given the increasing number of exits, perhaps the Congress should get a Goodbye template in place. I remember in boarding school, we all had to write a weekly aerogramme back home to our parents and by the second week, we’d had it down to a three line: `Missing you, love you, see you soon’. Maybe the Congress can do its own version in twittergramme: Not Missing You, Don’t love you anymore and Let’s not meet anytime soon !