MP municipal poll and Bihar's response to PM Modi shows Rahul Gandhi has miscalculated

A week after Parliament’s monsoon session ended amid recrimination and acrimony, politics remains toxic. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the architect behind his party’s blockade of Parliament, accused the Modi government of being a pro-corporate, grabber of farm land, and finance minister Arun Jaitley hit back suggesting the Gandhi angst is rooted in the belief that only one family has a divine right to rule.

Congress’s remarkable aggression in Parliament was triggered by the assessment that the ‘Lalitgate’ affair, that had external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in the dock for helping controversial ex-IPL chief Lalit Modi, along with the Vyapam recruitment scandal in Madhya Pradesh, presented an excellent opportunity to knock BJP’s claim to scam-free governance.
Taking recourse to what might be described as scorched earth politics, Congress made its demand for the resignations of Swaraj, Raje and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Chauhan non-negotiable. Despite a whittled down presence in Lok Sabha, Congress banked on its 68 MPs in Rajya Sabha to ensure its resignations first, discussion later stance thwarted passage of an amended land acquisition bill and the landmark legislation on a goods and services tax.
The calculation was simple enough: To retard the economic momentum Modi government is trying to generate and to try and get a ministerial scalp, the first in the NDA regime, on a corruption charge. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s response during his Independence Day speech that those immersed in graft were offering remedies will ensure the confrontation does not blow over soon.
Though apparently unconnected, the land and GST Bills were very much part of the Congress strategy on Lalitgate and Vyapam. Party leaders made no secret of the desire to hold up the bills and Congress’s hardline positions in parliamentary committees made this amply evident. Even when tough customers like Trinamool Congress and AIADMK assented to the GST Bill, Congress stayed out.
Yet, just as the monsoon session was ending, Congress did shift and accept a Lok Sabha debate after the government agreed to its adjournment motion. The results could not have pleased Congress much. Barring Rahul’s brief aggression, BJP’s articulate benches, led by Swaraj and Jaitley, got the better of the exchange. Worse, apart from Left and NCP, almost no other party supported Congress’s tactics of stalling the house.
It might be useful to apply the ‘strategic triangle’ formulation, often used to evaluate leadership and decision-making, to see whether Congress’s strategy saw objectives matching means and if outcomes met expectations. Though developed by Harvard scholars in the context of public managers, its concepts — whether a course of action is operationally possible, politically feasible and serves public purpose — can place Congress’s all or nothing tactics in perspective.
Commanding the largest block of 68 MPs in Rajya Sabha, Congress has the leverage to stall a constitutional amendment like the GST Bill. The need for order in the house during a vote makes this even more telling. Disrupting Lok Sabha is harder with just 44 MPs, but not impossible. But the tactics came at considerable cost. Congress MPs in Lok Sabha were forced to shadow or block ministers and clamber atop tables and, finally, face suspension of 25 members.
Whether the strategy was politically feasible begs the question if splendid isolation was a viable option. It made political sense to attack BJP over both Lalitgate and Vyapam and Rahul’s allegation that Swaraj had broken the law and deserved to go to jail could be intended to influence public opinion prepared to believe the worst of politicians. But the charge invited a counter-charge and the opportunity to raise really substantial issues of impropriety in assisting a dodgy individual like Lalit Modi was missed.