The game changer: The importance of being Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 

One road show is not enough to win elections, quipped a cynical Congress veteran in Lucknow. The six-hour-long road show of Priyanka Gandhi and Jyotiraditya Scindia on Monday was impressive, he acknowledged, but a lot more hard work was needed for the party to make a dent in Uttar Pradesh, if Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were serious, he had exclaimed somewhat ruefully on Monday afternoon.

By early Wednesday morning, the scepticism of several Congress workers gave way to cautious optimism. They had never seen a party leader listen so patiently to so many workers and local leaders for so long, admitted one of them. Others appeared impressed that she kept meeting the workers overnight. The marathon meetings which started late on Tuesday afternoon continued till 5 in the morning on Wednesday.

“There was nobody except Priyanka Ji. I had expected some other senior leader or assistants to be with her. But she met us alone, took her own notes, asked searching questions and seemed keen to hear us out,” gushed an awe-stuck Congress leader after meeting the new general secretary of the party in charge of eastern UP.

Another Congress worker who met her on Tuesday evening recalled how she put her at ease. ‘I am here to listen to you,’ she was told and she did pour her heart out, she claimed. Others also admitted that they felt less inhibited and could speak freely to her about the affairs of the party, local issues and the party’s lack of poll-preparedness.

During her first interaction with many of these Congress loyalists, she is said to have discussed at length the weaknesses of the party and what needed to be done. Most Congress loyalists were disarmed by her candour and willingness to take down their suggestions.

Remarkably, some of these people recalled that she discouraged them from talking about other parties and their poll strategies. Focus only on the Congress, its weaknesses and the strengths, Priyanka Gandhi apparently told them firmly. “She would not allow any criticism of opponents either,” they confided. “We are not concerned about what other parties are doing or how they are planning their election strategy. We are concerned only about the Congress and will fight on our strength,” she told a leader from Sultanpur when he started talking about how a political party was communalising the election.

In Lucknow, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra met sitting and former MPs, legislators and those in-charge of districts and wards. After collecting the feedback, she returns to Delhi before visiting individual constituencies where she will hold discussions with ground level workers.

The personal touch and patient hearing appear to have done wonders. Former MP Pramod Tiwari said, “Priyanka Ji’s entry into active politics has created waves and now it is for us to translate the wave into votes. We have done it in 1971, in 1991, in 2004 and 2009. There is no reason why we cannot do it again in 2019.”

She appears to have won the first round in the battle of perception among party supporters.

But then chemistry is part of the electoral battle. Arithmetic is loaded against her and few pundits in UP are willing to bet on the Congress at this moment.

The party had won just 22 Lok Sabha seats in 2009 before its tally plunged to just two in the general election of 2014. But then Congress supporters point out that even the Bahujan Samaj Party had drawn a blank in 2014 and was not able to win even one seat. The Samajwadi Party had fared only marginally better and had won four seats in the Lok Sabha while the BJP and its allies swept the state.

Five years later, battle lines have been redrawn, they claim, and say that the party has as much chance of improving its tally as the two regional parties, SP and the BSP, which have declared that they could contest for 38 seats each in the state and has left just two seats for the Congress and two for the RLD.

As the Dalit and OBC votes shifted to BSP and the SP respectively, and the upper castes cast their lot with the BJP, the Congress found itself in disarray. The party floundered following the Mandalisation of politics in the Hindi heartland in 1990.

Whenever Congress did well in the state, BJP suffered and when Congress failed, BJP’s votes and seat share went up.