- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
PRIYANKA Gandhi Vadra, the scion of India’s Nehru-Gandhi family which leads the Indian National Congress, the country’s grand-old party and on whom the party is banking heavily for making a comeback in the upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh, has stressed on the woman factor ahead of the big challenge.
The 49-year-old leader was found asking the crowd at a recent rally in the state to repeat after her, “I’m a woman, I can fight.”
The slogan is at the heart of the Congress’s bid to revive its fortunes in Uttar Pradesh, which is has been ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2017, by winning over women voters who have long been marginalised but are starting to find a voice, Reuters reported.
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Under Vadra, who was also there during the Congress’s campaign in 2017 but failed to impress, the opposition party has been trying to counter the saffron party’s caste card with the woman card.
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For the Congress, the elections in UP, which is considered India’s most crucial political state due to its massive clout in the Indian parliament (80 legislators in the 543-member Lok Sabha or the lower house of the parliament are from UP, the most from any state), the 2022 challenge is big. The grand-old party, which has been out of power in UP for many decades now, will have to produce a good show in UP if it aspires to challenge Modi in the general elections of 2024.
The Congress has seen repeated electoral humiliation against the BJP ever since Modi came to power in 2014. Its leadership turmoil has also added to the problems of the 136-year-old party, which has dominated for most part of India’s post-Independence politics.
The Gandhis, who have dominated the Congress for several years now, have failed to fire up the voters in the Modi era and particularly, the leadership of former president Rahul Gandhi, has failed to impress. He quit the presidency after the hammering that the Congress received in the 2019 general elections.
Sonia Gandhi, who is now the longest-serving president of the party, has returned as the interim chief but at 75, she is certainly not somebody that the party looks at for leadership in the long term. Other senior guards in the party have also started questioning the current form of leadership of the party, especially after the recent chaos in Punjab, one of the few states that the Congress rules at the moment.
The Congress, with its secular legacy, portrays itself as an inclusive national party and it will hope an appeal to the women voters by Vadra, who entered politics only in 2019, will help in building an alternative to Modi’s hardline Hindu agenda.
Violence against women is a major concern in India at the moment and particularly in UP, which according to official sources faces the highest number of gender crimes in the India. Vadra has tried to capitalise on the matter and promised the women a change.
“I want to tell the women that I will fight for them, the Congress party will fight for them,” Vadra recently said in the state’s Gorakhpur stronghold of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk who is seeking his second term.
In UP, the ruling BJP, which otherwise has a well-organised machinery, faces questions over handling of violence against women and the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also been criticised for its way of handling the ongoing farmers’ protests against Modi’s agricultural reforms which are allegedly pro-corporate. The incident in Lakhimpur Kheri district last month when the son of a central BJP minister allegedly ran his car over a group of protesting farmers caused a massive outrage across the country.
The Gorakhpur rally was attended by an unusually high number of women, Reuters added, which suggests that the Congress’s message is perhaps reaching where it is intended to.
“People, especially women, have started looking at Congress with hope, that the party will stand with women and become their voice,” Sunita Mishra, a 40-year-old Congress worker at the rally, told the news outlet.
Voters have also appreciated the Congress’s promise to field women in 40 per cent of the state’s 403 assembly constituencies, Mishra said, helping her to rope in 50 women as party candidates in the past few days.
The party also promised electric scooters and smartphones to female students, free rides on government buses for all women, three free cooking-gas cylinders per family in a year and gender-based job reservations.
However, the party also has its share of problems in UP. There are members, both in the lower and higher levels, who are disenchanted and resignations are not rare even as Vadra tries to stamp her authority, current and former party officials were cited as saying in interviews.
