COVER STORY
Though the ambitious march may not bring immediate electoral gains, the Congress is certainly on a recovery path
Outlook Magazine - 28 November 2022
Marching is a political act—from Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March to L.K. Advani’s ‘Rath Yatra’—which mobilises supporters. Can Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ be a game changer for the Congress Party?
A non-Gandhi as its chief has already induced a new sense of collective functioning in the Congress and for the first time in two decades, candidates’ names are being finalised without Sonia Gandhi being the last court of appeal
It takes more than making a rape survivor’s mother, an anganwadi worker, a Muslim women’s rights activist and a Dalit beauty pageant winner party candidates to make a strong statement vis a vis women representation, writes Rakhi Bose
If Congress has to fare any better than its miserable performance in 2021 in West Bengal, it has to recover the ground it lost to the TMC
The ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ gains significance in the sense that it offers ideological clarity to the party and may help it to energise the cadre and emerge as a challenge to the BJP
The Congress needs to build a narrative to counter the BJP and get its act together to win back popular support in the Hindi hinterland
Reduced to almost a non-existent political entity as the BJP made inroads into the Northeast region by forging winning alliances, a moribund Congress is leaving no stone unturned to make it happen in three states of Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland
The Congress is trying various strategies to win back Himachal and wrest Gujarat from the BJP
Vikram Raj revisits the riots that tore the industrial city of Jamshedpur in 1979 when Hindu fanatics held the entire city to ransom, killing more than 100 people, including children and women
Though the new Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge is a veteran organisation man, whether the Gandhis will give him a carte blanche or not is a moot question
A non-Gandhi as its chief has already induced a new sense of collective functioning in the Congress and for the first time in two decades, candidates’ names are being finalised without Sonia Gandhi being the last court of appeal
It takes more than making a rape survivor’s mother, an anganwadi worker, a Muslim women’s rights activist and a Dalit beauty pageant winner party candidates to make a strong statement vis a vis women representation, writes Rakhi Bose
If Congress has to fare any better than its miserable performance in 2021 in West Bengal, it has to recover the ground it lost to the TMC
The ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ gains significance in the sense that it offers ideological clarity to the party and may help it to energise the cadre and emerge as a challenge to the BJP
The Congress needs to build a narrative to counter the BJP and get its act together to win back popular support in the Hindi hinterland
Reduced to almost a non-existent political entity as the BJP made inroads into the Northeast region by forging winning alliances, a moribund Congress is leaving no stone unturned to make it happen in three states of Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland
The Congress is trying various strategies to win back Himachal and wrest Gujarat from the BJP
Vikram Raj revisits the riots that tore the industrial city of Jamshedpur in 1979 when Hindu fanatics held the entire city to ransom, killing more than 100 people, including children and women
Though the new Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge is a veteran organisation man, whether the Gandhis will give him a carte blanche or not is a moot question
OTHER STORIES
Sanjay Nirupam reminisces about the week he was part of Rahul Gandhi’s ambitious yatra, while giving us blow-by-blow account of the journey he took on foot with hundreds of party members and supporters
India is at a crossroads in terms of energy consumption and renewable forms of energy. India’s priorities should be climate change adaptation measures, not mitigation.
The literary biography of Hindi author Nirmal Verma, written by writer-journalist Vineet Gill, is an ode to the master
The memoir by a police officer tells a delightfully unique, personal tale of a cop surmounting routine bureaucratic and professional challenges to achieve a ‘near miracle’ in fixing a recalcitrant state
‘Caste was to be annihilated. But you cannot do that for as long as people were being born unequal,’ writes Amulya B. in her riveting short story, ‘What Do I Call You, Again?’
Film actor Sushant Singh recounts his day-long march with Rahul Gandhi in Nanded and how he was impressed by the vision and scale of the yatra in a climate of hate and bigotry
India is a fertility rate conundrum. Its six states have high figures, which mirror many developing countries and throw opportunities and challenges simultaneously. The rest of the country, however, runs parallel to developed nations with challenging demographic conditions
