TWEETS AND HEADLINES WIN MERE NARRATIVES, BUT GROUND WORK WINS HEARTS

If the Prime Minister was missing in action most of April and May, he has spent the entire month of June dispelling the notion of an absentee leader. He began his comeback narrative by deciding to cancel Class 12 boards, an announcement that was welcomed by parents and doctors alike. After that, it’s been a series of engagements with the headlines from speeding up the vaccinations (and blaming the states for the delays in the vaccination process) to reaching out to the Valley politicians. In between, he also tended to party matters and set his own house in order. BJP functionaries have been sent to all the states where the party has chief ministers and are taking stock, especially of the critical bastions of Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. And to keep the media engaged there is also the buzz of a cabinet reshuffle.

Whatever else you may say of the PMO, one thing it does well is managing the headlines. Once again it has managed to wrest the narrative from an absentee PM to one who is working hard to ensure both the ship of state and the party remain afloat. Of course, at this juncture, it would be prudent to include the hardworking Amit Malviya and team for managing the flow of social media goes a long way in the narrative building.

The Opposition too has been busy, with Sharad Pawar reaching out to like-minded parties. In fact, the two main stories of last week were the PM’s outreach on J&K and Pawar’s invitation to the Opposition. However, amid this buzz of activity, there was one absentee—the Congress. Team Rahul Gandhi was not included in Pawar’s invitation, and though he later clarified that he does not see an Opposition bloc minus the Congress to be an effective counter to the BJP, the party’s absence from the meeting was telling. Clearly, the Opposition does not see Congress as an effective counter to the BJP. It is also clear that the Opposition cannot counter the BJP without the Congress simply because there are around 195 Lok Sabha seats where there is a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress.

Yet, the absence of the Congress from the political narrative of the day is a telling statement. It’s not as if the party did nothing in the last week because Rahul Gandhi did release a white paper on the challenges ahead with an impending third wave. And certainly, the challenges from Covid-19 far outweigh any other concerns at the moment. But the Congress has to do more than tour the press conference and social media circuit. Just as the government has to deliver and not make grand promises, Congress has to oppose and show the way forward. It is easy to say that there is little Congress can do when it’s in Opposition, but where there is a will there’s the way. One only has to look at what B.V. Srinivas, the young Congress chief, has been up to in the last two months, and compare his track record with the rest of the party. From a relatively unknown leader, he has carved a name for himself minus all the flash and dash of his predecessors in the youth Congress and outshone most of his colleagues and seniors in the main party as well.

In the end, it’s the on-ground performance that wins trust, tweets, and headlines only win narratives.