Tiraskar is the voter’s terse message

THERE’s a certain inevitability about the victory of the BJP-led NDA in Bihar, the punishing of Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD and the decimation of the Congress party. Another thing is clear. Rahul Gandhi should go and settle in Colombia — or any of the other South American countries where he so fetchingly showed up in a white kurta-pajama and black bundi jacket in the middle of the Bihar campaign. There’s a word in Hindi the Bihari — and Punjabi — voter must have had in mind when it voted against the Congress earlier this week, that translates as little more than indifference and a little less than loathing.

Tiraskar. Contempt. Don’t take us for granted. Because if you do we will show you your place by voting for a party that we may or may not have considered otherwise.

In Bihar, voters were so filled with contempt for the Congress — read, Rahul Gandhi — that they have reduced the grand old party to six seats. This is the Congress’ fourth straight defeat since the Lok Sabha polls a year and a half ago — after Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi.

The tragedy of Indian politics is that Rahul refuses to be accountable or go to South America or see the writing on the wall — which is, that he should step down and allow the winds of democracy that he loves to talk about, to sweep through his own party.

Both in Punjab as well as in Jammu & Kashmir, the people have shaken a few citadels — and given fair warning to the ruling AAP and National Conference, respectively. Don’t take us for granted, the voter has said, both in Tarn Taran and Budgam.

In Tarn Taran, in the heart of the hotbed, the rebellious Punjabi has sent a few of his/her own messages. First, she has put on notice the ruling AAP, 15 months before the Assembly elections in the state. Second, while the AAP candidate won, he has been given a rude shock by the Akali Dal candidate — even if the jury is out on whether or not this is an Akali comeback in Punjab politics, since the party lost its mojo when it walked out of the NDA in the wake of the Centre’s imposition of the farm laws in 2020, won only three seats in the 2022 Assembly polls, was reduced to one seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and has been beset with factionalism.

Third, it’s equally significant that Sukhwinder Kaur, the Akali candidate, has outwitted the candidate supported by the separatist Waris Punjab De (WPD) political outfit — he has come third. Never forget that only a year and a half ago, the pro-Khalistan WPD won two seats in the Lok Sabha — one is the son of Indira Gandhi’s assassin, while the other remains in jail for attempted insurrection. So if Tarn Taran is now turning back towards moderation, the Akali Dal must certainly deserve two cheers and a pat on its back.

Fourth, Tarn Taran has treated the Congress with withering contempt — whose pretenders believe they deserve the throne from which the people of Punjab will, sooner than later, send AAP packing. Except, the Congress candidate lost his deposit, while the BJP was relegated to the fifth, also-ran spot.

Then there’s the don’t-take-us-for-granted-message from Budgam, which J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had won last September, along with Ganderbal — he vacated Budgam, which is why it went to the polls. Clearly, all is not well within the ruling National Conference. Abdullah has been punished because he has not been able to fulfil the people’s expectations of restoring the UT to statehood — never mind if it’s not in his hands, but in the hands of the Centre. Abdullah is paying the price for the fact that he is, in truth, only half a chief minister, but that he still wanted the CM’s chair.

This unforgiving mood on the part of the voter sharply contradicts the huge applause for PM Modi’s BJP as well as Nitish Kumar’s JDU in Bihar. Many analysts have put the NDA’s unprecedented win down to the large cash transfers for all voters, not just women — Jan Suraaj’s Pavan K Varma told The Tribune that the BJP-ruled Centre paid out Rs 30,000 crore hours before the model code of conduct kicked in, a large sum of money in a deeply poor state.

Perhaps the Bihar voter was scared into believing that “jungle raj” would return with the RJD — certainly, Lalu’s son has none of the fire for social justice reform that characterised Lalu Yadav himself, no matter his other shortcomings. And while all these reasons are fully germane, none fully explain why Bihar has so willingly turned saffron and why it is treating the Opposition with such contempt, or tiraskar.

The bottomline is the Opposition’s refusal to put up a real fight. Rahul Gandhi abandoned Bihar (for South America), Tejashwi Yadav made rash promises that he knew he couldn’t keep (one government job in every family) and Jan Suraaj’s Prashant Kishor allowed both anger and arrogance (“I will leave politics if Nitish Kumar gets more than 25 seats”) to come in the way of cold-blooded strategy. The Mahagathbandhan did not win because it was never really in the fight.

What do you do, then, when you’re confronted with a juggernaut on the one hand and a lily-livered coalition on the other that doesn’t even believe in itself? There are enough problems with the BJP to recount here — leading with the fact that the BJP had no compunction to leverage the resources of the Union government to tilt the election in its own direction, for example, the Rs 7,500 crore cash transfer to women.

The BJP’s hunger to win, as Bihar showed and has been clear in election after election, has never been in any doubt. Perhaps the Opposition should think about taking a leaf out of the book its political enemy has been reading for a while.