A history of slogans

Six years and an Emergency later, the Opposition did the same. Slogans had not diminished poverty to any significant extent. A desperate Indira Gandhi sought to turn free India into yet another Third World tinpot dictatorship. She threw all Opposition leaders into jail. Nothing opens eyes faster than the shutting of prison doors. The Opposition united under the Janata banner, and stormed to power in 1977 with an evocative message: 'Indira Hatao, Desh Bachao'.

In December 1979, Indira Gandhi reversed that message. The Janata government could not be severely faulted on governance, but its politics was execrable, stupid, egomaniacal and suicidal. Defections broke the government. Rising prices proved that everything was out of control. This time the Janata had to be removed to save the people.

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In January 1984 Rajiv Gandhi did not need a slogan: the iconic image of a martyred mother flooded Parliament with Congress MPs. Rajiv, misled by the usual suspects, began to believe that the mandate had been for his youth and sought to reshape the Congress in his image. Sneakers sneaked under the khadi pyjamas. It was a costly error. The Opposition, which would have taken a decade to harm the memory of Indira Gandhi, took only a couple of years to destroy an increasingly naive Rajiv. Corruption charges over the Bofors gun deal muddied his reputation. The slogan that brought V.P. Singh to power was a provocative one: 'Galli galli mein shor hai, Rajiv Gandhi chor hai'. It was a trifle unfair, but politics is not a game for the squeamish. A more powerful chant was led by L.K. Advani and the BJP: 'Mandir wahin banayenge'. We shall build a temple to the Lord Ram only at the spot where the Babri mosque stands. Ayodhya entered the centrestage of Indian politics.

Rajiv Gandhi laid the foundations of Advani's dream and P.V. Narasimha Rao fulfilled it. Poorly advised by R.K. Dhawan and Buta Singh, Rajiv sought to appease the burgeoning BJP vote by laying the foundations of the temple. On 6 December 1992 Rao did nothing while the mosque was destroyed. He did more of nothing when a small temple was quickly erected at that spot and worship began. The young Rajesh Pilot, still hopeful that something could be salvaged politically, argued that even if the destruction had not been stopped the construction could be prevented. Rao ignored him. A temple to Lord Ram now stands at Ayodhya. The VHP's current demand is slightly misplaced: it is not asking for a temple, it is only asking for a bigger temple.

The home minister of the time, S.B. Chavan remained as studiously loyal to Rao as he is loyal to Sonia Gandhi today. The clutch of Muslim leaders in the Congress, held their tongues and stretched out their hands. Rao bribed each one with promotions in his next Cabinet reshuffle. They took the bribes and lived happily till the elections of 1996. That is when their joy ended. In 1996 Rao had no slogan, because he had nothing to say. Obviously, he could not appeal to a traditional vote of the Congress, Muslims. That was a remarkable election because Rao believed that a deal with political parties was preferable to a deal with voters. So he concentrated on arrangements like the one he made with Kanshi Ram and Mayawati's BSP in Uttar Pradesh. Add the Congress vote to the BSP's and voila! It is extraordinary how the shrewdest politicians forge that an election is algebra rather than arithmetic, that it takes more than one factor to build an equation. It also needs chemistry, but Rao was noticeably lacking in this aspect.

The Congress could have recovered from Rajiv Gandhi's defeat in UP, but it could never recover from Rao's alliance in UP. Rao simply ceded vast amounts of electoral space to Mayawati, who occupied what she got, and refused to vacate it. The Dalits were lost completely to the Congress after 1996. With the Muslims shifting to either the BSP or Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the Brahmins turning to BJP, the Congress was left with nothing more than memories. Sonia Gandhi's alliance with Mayawati, if it happens, will confirm that Congress has formally accepted its status as a disappearing memory in UP.

Rao could not, or would not, advertise his economic reforms, which he could legitimately claim the credit for. He was trapped by the legacy of 1971. He was an Indira man, and thought that he could sell a dead slogan even after he had personally killed it by dismantling the failed theories of the 70s in order to save the economy of the 90s. Rao thought that economic reforms could be slipped through surreptitiously. The Congress is still confused about liberalisation.

Rao's successor Sitaram Kesri had no slogan either, but then the less Kesri said the better. The BJP, on the other hand, found that its two-point programme of mandir construction and an attack on minority-appeasement was still bringing in the voters. This was not surprising, because no one else had anything to offer in a time when strange, illogical coalitions held power in a vacuum. Lottery winners like Inder Gujral and H.D. Deve Gowda could hardly offer their individual good fortune as a platform for political mobilisation.

When Sonia Gandhi became leader of the Congress, there was genuine hope in the party that she would shape a new, and youthful dream over the layers of traditional Congress values like secularism and strong governance. It helped that she was not tainted by the devious manipulations that had characterised Congress policy over Ayodhya.

Instead, the only Sonia memory etched in the voter's mind from the elections of 1999 was a number, 272, uttered in an Italian accent. Sonia Gandhi became identified with a search for personal power. Everyone knew what power would bring to Sonia, but no one tried to explain what this would mean to the Indian. More than five years have passed since that self-goal; time enough for course correction. But the Congress has still not managed to identify itself sharply, deeply with any social or economic policy. What was left of its withered secularism disappeared after Gujarat. Even in the recent Assembly elections, Digvijay Singh thought that cow's urine would persuade the voter to ignore missing electricity, and Ajit Jogi felt that by calling the cow a national animal, he could make the voter forget the venality of his administration. Silly.

The Congress under Sonia Gandhi has not supported Atal Behari Vajpayee's vigorous liberalisation programme. This is unexceptional. But neither has the Congress offered an alternative economic policy that anyone can understand. The impression therefore is that Sonia Gandhi opposes merely for the sake of opposition, that it is a negative position rather than a positive one. There is regular rhetoric about the poor of course but even the poor are tired of shibboleths. When five years ago the vast reconstruction of the national infrastructure was launched, Dr Manmohan Singh argued in Parliament that money would never be found for such fantasies. Five years later, the roads have come as have the elections. Delhi's voters will doubtless ask Dr Singh why he thought roads could not be improved.

Three decades after Garibi Hatao soared through the national imagination, what does the Indian electorate want to hear?

There are some elements in the BJP who believe that 'Garibi Hatao' should now give way to 'Amiri Badhao'. This would be wrong, and even unethical. Wealth cannot become a slogan as long as Indians continue to live under the poverty line. The line may have lowered, from 40% to 25%; but that still means that 250 million Indians are without adequate food or shelter, in fact on the edge of despair. 'Amiri Badhao' can be a legitimate slogan only when the poverty line has been completely eliminated.

And yet there is an optimism in the air. Only the blind can deny that. Vajpayee's single biggest success has been to restore hope into the Indian air, and a belief that genuine economic progress is possible, and within our lifetime. His adjacent vision of peace fits in well, because progress shifts from arithmetical speed to geometrical speed with peace. In a sense he has reintroduced the mood that Jawaharlal Nehru created in 1957, when the messenger of world peace meshed his vision with the promise of the Five Year Plans. The voter is not a fool. He does not expect miracles to happen, and is wary of any false slogans. But what he wants to hear this time can be summed up in two words: 'Taraqqi Dikhao'. Show me progress. Hope for the future will deliver the present.

The Congress seeks to ally with Mayawati's BSP, but the real BSP of the hour is 'Bijli, Sadak, Paani'. Electricity, Roads and Water are the Roti, Kapda, Makaan of 2004. Some within the BJP -- it could not have emanated from anywhere else -- has begun the election campaign on SMS. One message doing the SMS rounds says: "If pro is the opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?"

The Congress needs to find an answer to that one pretty fast.

MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age.