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Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are both damaging their respective parties. A robust Bharatiya Janata Party and a frail Congress suffer from exactly the same weaknesses — over centralisation, extreme dependence on their national leadership and an unhealthy obsession with one dominant face. This may seem counter-intuitive, given how the two parties’ electoral trajectories have differed since 2014.

While the BJP has met with stupendous success at the national level with differing results in state elections, the Congress has collapsed nationally but received more encouraging mandate in states.

This was nowhere more apparent than in the recently conducted Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections. The BJP produced a less-than-exciting show and the Congress ended up with more-than-expected numbers. And both tell us the same story — the need for the two parties to reduce their dependence on their top, national leader.

Because the BJP’s Narendra Modi, though loved and trusted by voters in Lok Sabha elections, can’t recreate the magic in states where the party has to put someone other than him in the front. The Congress’ Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, lends himself to unfortunate mockery and hurts the party both nationally and in states. The Congress performs better in states where it has strong regional leaders, which isn’t the case with the BJP.

This image issue has reached a point where the BJP and Congress’ electoral fates, whether good or bad, now reflect the malaise that they have allowed to fester.

Also read: If BJP leaders could speak like Rahul Bajaj, this is what they would tell Modi & Amit Shah

Why Modi is hurting BJP

This could be more of a contrarian view, but Narendra Modi — while having achieved the feat of propelling his BJP to power at the Centre for two consecutive terms, with an even stronger mandate the second time – is actually hurting the party in the long run, and at a deeper level than is apparent.

Modi has emerged as the undisputed king in the Lok Sabha elections. There is no questioning his popularity or effectiveness as a mass leader, almost creating a cult-like following. But this identification of the BJP with Modi has become too intense. For voters, Modi is BJP and BJP is Modi. And so, when it isn’t about Modi, the voter doesn’t quite feel the same way about the BJP, finding little reason to vote for it.

Consider Uttar Pradesh 2017. Or Tripura 2018. Or even Assam 2016. These elections were fought with Modi as the BJP’s face; the frenzy was something else and journalists on the ground saw how the voters blindly voted for ‘Modi’, sometimes not even knowing who the candidate in their constituency was.

But elections in states where the BJP had a face other than Modi, the results were different. Karnataka had B.S. Yediyurappa, Rajasthan had Vasundhara Raje, Chhattisgarh had Raman Singh, and Madhya Pradesh had Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Not to forget, the BJP’s face in Delhi in 2015 was Kiran Bedi. The voters didn’t exactly seem thrilled about the BJP in any of these polls. They knew these weren’t about Modi.

The effect of Modi’s election rallies depended on whom the voter saw as carrying the BJP’s baton. In Uttar Pradesh in 2017, he addressed around two dozen rallies and worked his magic; in the three assembly elections in December 2018, Modi attended close to 30 rallies in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan but with strong state BJP leaders, it wasn’t about him at all.

Most recently in Maharashtra and Haryana, Modi campaigned adequately, but the voter knew the election was about Devendra Fadnavis and Manohar Lal Khattar, respectively.

The BJP has now basically fallen into a trap of its own making. The party has moulded itself around Modi instead of the other way round. Amit Shah, of course, adds to that overbearing central leadership factor. The bigger trap, though, is the states where the BJP has its own chief ministers – it can’t possibly go into the next election with Modi as the face. In Uttar Pradesh 2022, the BJP will be faced with this conundrum — how to sell Modi to the voter when Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is at the helm.

Also read: Rahul Gandhi shouldn’t stand in the way of Congress’ regional leaders like Amarinder Singh

Rahul Gandhi & the Congress

For the Congress, the failing is the same, but the results are different. The Congress is way too closely associated with the Gandhi family to be thought of as under any other leadership. As Congress president, Rahul Gandhi was the obvious face. But even after having ‘relinquished’ the post, he remains the face — the family scion and still active in politics (although as per his whim). His mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is obviously not the leader of today or tomorrow and the role of sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra remains way too ambiguous.

Rahul Gandhi invites little trust from voters, almost encouraging contempt instead. The 2019 Lok Sabha election, which Rahul led from the front, is the best example of his ineffectiveness. But more importantly, it is an example of how he bogs the Congress down.

Rahul Gandhi addressed only four rallies in Maharashtra and two in Haryana. In the latter, veteran Bhupinder Singh Hooda took charge and the results were for all to see. Whether it was Punjab 2017 under Captain Amarinder Singh or Chhattisgarh 2018 under Bhupesh Baghel, the Congress’ supreme run in states was possible precisely because the top leadership was not leading the campaign.

So, when the voter thinks she is voting for Rahul, when the association is entirely about him, there is clear rejection. But when the voter has an Amarinder Singh or a Kamal Nath-Jyotiraditya Scindia or Ashok Gehlot-Sachin Pilot kind of leadership in mind, the Congress does not seem like a bad prospect after all.

For both Narendra Modi’s BJP and Rahul Gandhi’s Congress, the lesson is ultimately the same — the complete identification with one national leader and dominance of the ‘high command culture’ can damage the party. This could very well mean that with both Modi and Gandhi out of the scene, the fortunes of both BJP and Congress could also switch from their current state.

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