The Gandhis need to recognise these pitfalls. Their overt emphasis on singular issues (caste, class) without connecting them to complex, local dynamics and the aspirations of a rapidly changing electorate (whose needs and preferences are nowhere close to what they were a decade back) needs careful assessment.
The Congress leadership has to also ponder whether merely banking on the distribution of constrained state resources, like public sector jobs or reconfiguring reservations, will create the kind of coalitions it needs (especially with regional allies) to win.
For now, what we see is a Congress vote-share built around an anti-BJP lobby, hardly backed by those who are imagining an alternative because there is nothing for them to see.
(Deepanshu Mohan is a Professor of Economics, Dean, IDEAS, Office of Inter-Disciplinary Studies, and Director of Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES), OP Jindal Global University. He is a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics,…