2 weeks ago
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Every morning, between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., before the intensity of the heat rises, Congress worker Basvaraj Ajari Ghadhinglaj, 55, goes door-to-door in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur Lok Sabha constituency armed with the Congress’s “guarantee card”.
While the Congress’s manifesto has been in the limelight with sustained attacks from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the guarantees that sum up the manifesto have become a conversation starter for workers like Mr. Ghadhinglaj among the voters.
The cards are printed in Marathi, making it easier for him to explain the five Nyays and 25 guarantees that the Congress is promising to deliver, if it comes to power. The party has printed over eight crore cards in 12 languages. In the last one week that he has been doing the rounds with the cards, the conversation follows a familiar pattern. As he reads out the promises - usually to a group of men - curious women of the household stroll in midway with questions. The talk often gets redirected to the rising prices of essential commodities. He utilises the opportunity to reel off comparative prices of food items, fuel, and LPG cylinders, between the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) years and Mr. Modi’s 10-year tenure.
“One of the questions that is often been asked, is how will the Congress find money to deliver all these promises? I simply point to our neighbouring State Karnataka, where our government has already delivered on all the promises,” he remarks. It helps that Kolhapur is located on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border.
The promise that draws the most enthusiasm is the Mahalakshmi Scheme. “When I tell them that they will receive ₹8,500 each month if they vote for the Congress, they are sceptical at first. Then comes a barrage of questions and our conversation usually ends with squeals of approval as they count the possible ways they could use this money,” Purnima Semariya, who is going door-to-door in Chhattisgarh’s Sarguja constituency, said. Ms. Semariya is glad that instead of pamphlets that she carried around in the 2019 election, she has cards that lend the promises a more concrete air. “It feels good that we are not asking for votes, we are making promises,” Ms. Semariya added.
The Congress has always been criticised for being top-heavy and disconnected with the ground realities in sharp contrast to BJP’s dense network of Panna Pramukhs (in-charges for each page of electoral roll). In January, the party began an exercise to change this. It instituted a central war room, headed by former IAS officer Sasikanth Senthil. The average age of the five members of the war room is 39 years, signalling a generational shift in the decision-making process. Mr. Senthil headed the war room during the Karnataka and Telangana elections too. The 2024 war room is replicating the processes that were successfully tested in these two States. A chain of workers was created connecting to the war room in Delhi, up to the block level in all States.
Mr. Senthil believes that the Congress’s 2024 campaign is materially different from their 2019 one. “Our focus in 2019 was on the narrative, today our focus is on the cadre and organisation,” he said. Each State capital has a war room that in turn coordinates with districts and blocks. Mr. Senthil insists that they be called “connect centres”. A call from Delhi, he said, makes a strong connection with the worker on the ground, and that is what these centres are designed for. For the worker, the guarantee cards in turn, forge their connection with the voter. Each card carries signatures of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former President Rahul Gandhi. “It is a tangible assurance from our end,” he added.
The Congress also sees this pithy card as a tool to counter the attack on its manifesto from the BJP. “Guarantee cards are an effective weapon in the hand of the karyakarta to counter the disinformation being spread by the BJP on the Congress manifesto,” vice-chairman of the central war room, Varun Santhosh, said.
