With every election it's clear there's no opposition to stop Modi

The results to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) are out, and even as I write, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won 180, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) 46 and the Congress 30 seats out of 270.

This, in the backdrop of the victory of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand elections, along with contrived and manufactured government formations in Manipur and Goa — where it ended up as the bridesmaid — shows how the Modi juggernaut has become almost unstoppable.

Meanwhile, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has been busy trying to conjure up some opposition unity, ostensibly for the presidential election, but also to realise a united opposition to take on the BJP in 2019.

If recent indications are anything to go by, it will be an uphill task even for a united opposition to stop the Modi mean machine.

Even before they can agree upon some kind of formula or a common minimum programme, the parties will have to identify why they are not being able to attract the "millennial" and the "Generation X" to vote for them.

Take, for instance, the Congress. Despite being the grand old party of India, it’s being led by a relatively young (by Indian standards) Rahul Gandhi, who will take charge as the party president when the organisational poll culminates in October.

But the majority of the Indian youth do not identify with Rahul or his party.

In fact, they are much more likely to vote for the BJP despite the party being led by a senior citizen.

The failure to attract the millennial is not just limited to the Congress. Even in other states, the youth and the emerging middle class have been voting for the BJP ever since the 2009 elections.

So what explains the seemingly liberal and well-to-do educated folks voting for a party that proclaims to usher in a "Hindu Rashtra"?

Primarily, it’s a leadership issue according to most experts. Most people are taken in by the sheer energy and work ethic of the prime minister who remains the primary vote catcher for the BJP. Is it as simple as that?

Despite being a party that stands for everything conservative, is Modi’s persona proving to be the magic that has them winning over the youth and the middle class?

In any democracy, the victory of a party or a presidential candidate has as much to do with the quality of the opposition as the winning candidate. If the opposition can’t offer an alternative, it’s always likely that the status quo-ists and the majority will go by the tried and tested combination.

When one looks at the strategy of the Congress, which remains the primary opposition party as the results in Punjab and Goa prove, it’s entirely centred on criticism of the prime minister and his supposed authoritarian rule.

This is quite a contrast from 2014, when Narendra Modi was "the-one-who-must-not-be-named" as far as Rahul Gandhi was concerned. Suddenly, after the emphatic victory for Modi, something changed and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress started attacking Modi for anything and everything. It should finally dawn upon them that this strategy is not working.

It’s time Rahul Gandhi and the other opposition parties came up with better strategies to counter Modi. For once, they should present themselves as an alternative. And that alternative cannot be the overused peasant-farmer rhetoric that nobody gives a damn about anymore.

Gandhi should realise that he has to be more expedient to win elections and only if he is in power can he do the many things he cares about.

But you have to address the youth and the middle class to win in the India of 2017. Every time the Congress is confused strategy-wise, their immediate instinct is to go back to the rule book of an Indira Gandhi or a Rajiv Gandhi.

But times have changed and this is an India where more than 50 per cent of the population finds its sustenance through means other than agriculture. Moreover, the farmers and the urban or rural poor don’t vote as a bloc.

Their votes are divided on caste and religious lines. The regional parties still manage to hold on to their votebank by playing identity politics, but that cannot be the response of a primary opposition party to wrest back its position.

Even the Dalits, tribals and the minority don’t vote en bloc anymore. And they are all aspirational and would like to make it to the next level.

The opposition parties and the Congress in particular, will have to come up with an attractive package for the aspirational class. How they do that is another matter altogether.

Rahul Gandhi’s leadership style is another issue concerning the party. There is a reason why the Congress won Punjab. Apart from the unprecedented anti-incumbency helping them, they also had to deal with an emerging force like the AAP.

Still, they won a thumping majority. The primary reason was a viable face in Captain Amarinder Singh. Apart from being a former CM, he seemed confident and looked as if he had a solution for all of Punjab’s problems. And that perception wins half the battle.

Rahul Gandhi’s Achilles heel have been his communication skills, or the lack of them. Nobody thinks he is a bad guy, or a “Pappu” as the BJP would like him projected as. It seems strange that he hasn’t been able to find a talented speechwriter who can make up for such deficiencies.

Moreover, more than what he says, how he says is just as important. You have to sound convincing. And Rahul Gandhi doesn’t sound convincing in most of his speeches.

If the Congress plans to go with Rahul Gandhi as its face in 2019, they’ll have to do a lot of work with Rahul in the background. If I were to advise Rahul Gandhi on his speeches, it would be to just be himself.

If a man speaks from the heart, more often than not, he is likely to convince his listeners or at least connect with them.

Apart from leadership, the opposition parties will have to find a way to speak to the large number of people who support BJP just on account of Modi but find the saffron party’s Cow politics and Hindutva fringe abominable.

They can do that only by smart messaging and appealing to the youth and by taking strong stands on issues of patriotism and separatism. It would also help if they spoke clearly where they stood on issues like Kashmir and immediately disowning the controversial statements of the usual suspects, who speak out of turn after every major event.

The majority of people would still want to be somewhere in the middle than either identify with the extreme right and the extreme left.

For that, it would be important for the Centrist parties to criticise the Hindutva extremists and the Islamists in the same vein as also the Far Right and the Far Left unequivocally for that matter.

Congress will also do well to stitch up an alliance with mainstream Left parties like the CPI (M) and the CPI. But the impediments remain the "puritans" in the CPM under Prakash Karat, who, incidentally, has never been a Parliamentarian or subjected himself to any kind of scrutiny outside the closed doors of his party’s ivory tower.

Amit Shah kickstarted his Bengal outreach from Naxalbari, carefully chosen to identify the Mainstream Left with its extreme cousin among the masses. It would also be advisable for the Mainstream Left to have a relook at their alliance with the CPI-ML, who has very divergent views on separatism and on related issues.

The time is running out for the Congress and the other opposition parties to set the narrative rather than constantly react to the narrative set by the ruling party or 2019 will see Modi emerging ever stronger.

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