Why Pilot, Scindia haven’t done what Mamata, Pawar and Jagan did — launch a new party

The likes of Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee emerged as tall leaders after launching their parties, but things stand differently in Modi-Shah era.

Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot at the Off The Cuff event | Source: ThePrint

The relatively younger leaders Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot may have missed out on a perfect opportunity to float a new party, and provide the people a much-needed alternative to both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. While Scindia joined the BJP, Pilot’s trajectory remains unclear. But so far, the former Rajasthan deputy chief minister seems to have shown no sign or inclination to start a new outfit and seems more tilted towards flirting with the ruling party at the Centre.

Scindia and Pilot are no Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee or even Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy — regional leaders of varying hues who broke away from the Congress to launch their own parties, and rather successfully.

Why BJP?

Why have Scindia and Pilot not shown the gumption to float a new party? Surely, the BJP is a difficult choice for Scindia, at least ideologically. And this might just be Pilot’s dilemma, too, as he weighs his options. For leaders with a secular and progressive image as theirs, any association with a majoritarian, Hindutva party like the BJP would only make them uncomfortable.

For them, the BJP becomes an attractive proposition because joining an already established party, which is at present politically and electorally dominant, is the easier way out than starting things from scratch. Launching a new party is a complex, back-breaking and an onerous task. It requires a formidable mass base, time, power, funds, age, patience, a guiding thought or binding ideology, and most importantly, the ability and confidence to capture voter imagination in an era dominated by Narendra Modi’s popularity and an election-winning streak of the BJP.

Or you need to be a maverick like Arvind Kejriwal to boldly break into the scene, riding on one agenda (anti-corruption, in his case), form a party, and go on to capture the very heart of power — the national capital. Scindia, and from what it increasingly looks like, Pilot too, clearly don’t have enough of the above qualities, except of course the age. But even Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party could not survive to fight the long haul after losing in Punjab and Haryana.

Previously, whenever there has been a new national alternative — after Indira Gandhi’s emergency and Rajiv Gandhi’s Bofors scandal — there was an enabling political environment due to the shortcomings of the ruling party. But Modi and Amit Shah are not offering any such window to enable an opposition alternative. This is why it is not easy for any Congress break away politician to begin anew today. Even Kejriwal launched his party before the Modi-Shah era.

The Scindia-Pilot trajectory

Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot have a common grouse — both believe they should have been made chief ministers of their respective states after the Congress won the December 2018 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and that they were sacrificed at the altar of the egos of seniority.

They are right in their assessment that the Congress leadership is way too insecure and self-obsessed to allow young regional satraps to grow.

Scindia left the Congress with 22 MLAs. But if he was so sure of his mass base in Madhya Pradesh — confident enough to seek chief minister-ship — why did he not launch his own party instead? Why go to the BJP that already had a stalwart and three-time chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan? If the grudge with the Congress was being denied CM’s post, why did Scindia settle for anything less than that in the BJP? Is becoming a central minister, if we go by the buzz in political circles, was all he had in mind when he quit the Congress?

Sachin Pilot, meanwhile, has never been secretive about his ambitions of becoming the Rajasthan chief minister, and how he was ‘wrongfully’ denied the chair — not an invalid resentment from his point of view. But if Pilot has indeed worked so hard on the ground in the state, built a base for himself and served the people, why not take the risk of launching a new political party and making a difference through that? Although too early to speak for him since his course remains uncertain, but if he had to make the plunge, he should have been on it by now.

Could the younger Congress turks — all those who are equally disillusioned with the party — not have come together to float a new outfit, lending to it what they bring from each state?

It is much easier to jump to an established platform. Startups are never easy, and least of all in politics. If immediate power is the only aim, launching a new party can never work. It requires the ability to garner votes, hardwork and most importantly, the patience to wait to be out of power for long.

To raise funds is also an uphill task. To make inroads in electoral politics requires an organisation that needs to be painfully built and nurtured — this requires the ability to negotiate egos and put the party before self, at least in the initial phase.

The braver ones

In 1999, veteran politician Sharad Pawar quit the Congress — unhappy with the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and launched the Nationalist Congress Party. He went on to be the big boss of Maharashtra politics. The party may have remained largely limited to one state, but given the number of seats Maharashtra sends to Lok Sabha — 48 — Pawar has remained a critical political point nationally, having served as Union minister multiple times.

Mamata Banerjee’s story needs little telling. She founded the Trinamool Congress in 1997, after a bitter parting with the Congress. West Bengal wasn’t an easy state — the Left had an iron grip over it and the politics of the state was as murky as violent. Banerjee adapted to the game, showed adequate patience and by 2011, did the unthinkable — she not only dislodged the 34-year-old Left front government in the state but also ensured its near-annihilation. Today, she is among the most vocal and powerful opposition leaders in the country.

S. Jaganmohan Reddy’s political trajectory in Andhra Pradesh is an interesting one. Sidelined after his father and former CM Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s sudden death, Jagan found himself at the crossroads. Following months of gruelling work and endless travels across the state, the young leader in 2011 launched the Yuvajana Sramika Raythu Congress Party, or the YSRCP. At just 46, Jagan became the CM of Andhra Pradesh following a massive victory in 2019.

The story of Assam’s Himanta Biswa Sarma, again a disgruntled Congress leader, is slightly different. He left the party after publicly speaking out against its high command culture, but joined the BJP instead of forming his own party. He jumped from a party that had dominated the state for decades, to a party that had never ever been in power there, and one which traditionally had no base there. So, while he may not have launched his own outfit, he did risk joining what was a fresh force there. However, he has single-handedly at the state-level, with help from Modi’s popularity and Shah’s management skills, built a solid base for the BJP not just in Assam, but in the entire Northeast.

For Scindia and Pilot, the big question remains — what is their endgame? If it is just to get easy access to power, the BJP may well be the right option. But if it is to genuinely make a mark and leave a legacy behind, they are doing a great disservice to themselves and to Indian politics by being too lazy to launch a credible, strong alternative to counter the hegemony of the BJP and Congress in their respective states, as well as nationally.

Views are personal.