NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi 's single-minded focus on PM Narendra Modi during his maha-yatra in Uttar Pradesh stems from a desperate desire to convince key demographics that Congress remains the bulwark against BJP despite its pale political health.Congress's 2017 campaign is anchored in the belief that its prolonged focus on Modi will show it as the only outfit taking on the saffron outfit, ahead of SP and BSP.“The focus on Modi will benefit us since those opposed to BJP will need to be convinced that only Congress can take on BJP,“ a top campaign strategist said.Those on the party radar are farmers whom Rahul is promising loan waiver and a 50% reduction in power bills -sops, Congress feels, will work across the caste divide.The stumbling block in Congress's BJP-centric stra tegy is that even if it succeeds in softening up these social blocs through an intense campaign against Modi, the party will have to convince them that it's a viable option.Much as Congress is enthusiastic about its new strategy , finding a new adversary in BJP, instead of SP and BSP, flows from exhausting of options during the last three polls. Rahul ran cam paigns against Mayawati in 2007 and Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2012 but couldn'ot arrest Congress's decline.It has made the party realise that taking on regional caste outfits is an intractable task given the complicated narrative of social engineering and local equations.Instead, targeting BJP simplifies the challenge by talking about pan-caste themes like “rich vs poor“, “communal vs secular“ besides referring to attacks on Dalits.