Dear Express Reader The final scores in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, and a day earlier, in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, were writ large this week. The AAP won MCD and Congress wrested Himachal, but it was the BJP victory in Gujarat that is the big political story. After 27 years, a 7th straight term, with 156 seats out of 182 and a 52.5 per cent vote share - those are the numbers that are the most telling. They loom over the AAP's MCD win and Congress in Himachal, both narrow victories. The day after, non-BJP parties will be tempted to look at those numbers and draw the convenient conclusions that let them off the hook - a lack of Opposition unity was responsible, the AAP's rise cut down the Congress more than it hurt the BJP, the BJP's win was fashioned by its money/muscle power and its control over media and the narrative. For Congress, however, the time may be over to blame the BJP, or to look for answers in poll arithmetic. The BJP's will-to-win which seems often unscrupulous and always undiminished by winning, and which was visible in its refusal to take even its long-time bastion for granted ahead of this Gujarat election, is not the sole reason for its serial successes. Nor is a Mahagathbandhan, of the kind that failed in UP and succeeded in Bihar, the one-stop answer for non-BJP parties. Gujarat, the laboratory of Hindutva and karambhoomi of the Modi-BJP, has resurrected a fundamental question for the party headed by Mallikarjun Kharge but still controlled by Rahul Gandhi - does it have the idea, or the language, to take on the BJP? While a localisation of the campaign, effectively leaving it to state leaders and candidates, may have worked for Congress in Himachal, against a centrally driven Modi-BJP, it speaks too much of an absence at its core to be a long-term strategy or one that endures nationally. For all the talk, and reality too, of the BJP's social engineering and organisational machine, its dominance comprises a powerful idea, or set of ideas - Hindutva, of course and above all, and the allures of muscular nationalism and strongman leadership. High-visibility development projects supplemented by an individual-centred labharthi politics for all, mixed with a constant contrivance of "us" versus "them" - where "us" are always-besieged and always-provoked by a "them" who are not-only or not-always the Muslim minority allegedly appeased by previous Congress regimes. "They" can be a shifting cast of not so well defined sections and communities - for instance, the "Lutyens' elites", who ostensibly perpetuate themselves as Left-liberal cabals patronised by a handful of entitled political families, denying access to others in institutions and other public spaces. Or the shadowy others who, in PM Modi's framing in his victory speech after the Gujarat results, project themselves as "neutral" to cover up their BJP-bashing. A showmanship vis a vis the world, a flattering framing of "India" on an imagined global stage for the eyes of the domestic audience in town and especially in village, is also a crucial part of the BJP's multi-layered and multi-vocal appeal. In Gujarat, different strands of the BJP's pitch have melded into a seamless whole that has sunk deep. An entire generation of voters has grown up seeing only the BJP win, and many refer to the BJP almost as family - when I travelled to the state to cover this election, I was struck by the father-and-son examples voters used to explain even their anger or disaffection with the incumbent BJP. This is what Congress is up against - the idea of the BJP, not just its machine. The idea is honed in Gujarat and spreading nationally. This is what it must counter by articulating its own idea of what it is and what it can be - not by mechanically stitching up coalitions, or by leaving the fight to individual candidates in their respective constituencies. That's what it will take to defeat the BJP, as opposed to merely pulling ahead of it, as in Himachal Pradesh. As for the regional party, it can defeat the BJP, and it has done so in several states, but it will be limited by its narrower platform and agenda as an all-India adversary. Nationally, for now, and despite its Gujarat debacle, Congress remains the principal challenger of the BJP. Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra is being touted as the Congress finally staking out an alternative ground in terms of ideas and ideology in times of the Modi-BJP. But so far, the problem is this - even when Congress takes to the street, it seems to draw attention to its distance from it. A yatra that sidesteps Gujarat, that does not have anything to say to voters in a high-stakes election, is not going far enough. For the yatra to be meaningful, and to make a difference, Congress needs to catch up with its leader, or the Rahul Gandhi Show needs to make room for his party. Till next week, Vandita | 
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