Bharat Jodo Yatra 2.0 In The Works
By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2023-02-27 13:07:21
About the Author
The
Congress party has, in principle, decided to conduct another yatra. It announced
that Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) 2.0 is under active consideration. This time, the
march will be east-to-west and the yatra is likely to start from Pasighat in
Arunachal Pradesh and end at Porbandar in Gujarat. With this, the party hopes
to cover the entire nation in its reaching out to the common man initiative
before the 2024 general elections. Obviously, without going into the arithmetic
of how the BJY is going to help the party in increasing its vote share by
winning over voters, the party is more concerned about spreading its vision of 'inclusive
India' to counter the BJP.
There is no
doubt the BJY achieved many things. First and foremost, it helped hugely in
changing the image of Rahul Gandhi from a reluctant and 'drawing-room' politician
to one who was not afraid of hitting the roads to meet people, listen to their
problems and tell them about the Congress' vision of inclusive growth. Despite
the BJPs attempt to change the narrative by bringing up his expensive t-shirts
and shoes, Rahul Gandhi did score innumerable brownie points by undertaking
what he has called "a four-month tapasya".
Then, the
BJY proved to the BJP as also to doubting Thomases in the opposition and also
within the Congress that despite its electoral losses and plummeting vote
share, the pan-India infrastructure of the party was intact and so was its
capacity and ability to organize an event of such magnitude and that the country was not Congress-mukt, as of now.The yatra also
helped to bring Rahul Gandhi closer to the people and the Congress workers. The
demoralized Congress workers now have something to talk about when they face
the people.
Hence, it
is good that the east-to-west leg of the yatra is being planned. Rahul Gandhi
now needs to work on the feedback he has received in the first yatra and fine
tune his responses when he meets Congress workers and the common people in
states like Arunachal, Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha,Jharkhand,
Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Also, he needs to use the yatra to bring
like-minded opposition parties together. That would be a huge achievement.
