Congress lacked sons-of-soil factor

As the Congress looks to rebuild itself after the drubbing by the Shiv Sena-BJP-RPI(A) alliance and the MNS, it will find a key component missing from its Mumbai leadership — the Marathi manoos.

Of the five Members of Parliament (MPs) of the Congress from Mumbai, only one can claim to be a Marathi manoos, Eknath Gaikwad. But there are some who might prefer to see him as a Dalit leader, though caste is no longer a major issue in Mumbai.

The rest — Gurudas Kamat, Milind Deora, Priya Dutt, and Sanjay Nirupam — are seen as non-Marathis.

Take a look at Vidhan Sabha members from Mumbai. The Congress has 17 members and less than a third — only five — are Marathis. And the Congress chief is Kripashankar Singh. The Congress in Mumbai has reached out to Dalits, south Indians, north Indians, cosmopolitans (Priya Dutt, Milind Deora) but not the Maharashtrians.

The state Congress, in its report to All-India Congress Committee (AICC), will highlight that it has no-Marathi face to counter the Shiv Sena.

“We have north Indian, Dalits and minority leaders to represent the different sections of society. But what about Marathi leaders?” asked a Congress state functionary, adding that its ally NCP is also in a similar situation.

A Congress leader, who did not want to be named, agreed that the party had realised that it had erred in neglecting the Marathi voters. “The fact that we had to invite Narayan Rane here is because the party has not nurtured Marathi leaders from Mumbai who can create a vote bank,” he said.

Professor Surendra Jhondhale, head of the Mumbai university’s department of politics, doubts that linguistic identity matters. “Let us not fall for the Sena brand of linguistic parochialism. Rather, you will notice winners are those who, or whose family, have done work. How else can you explain the victory of Jyoti Alavani (wife of Parag Alavani, who contested as an Independent after the BJP did not nominate her),” he said.

Yet, there are some who say that while the first preference is for an honest person who gets work done regardless of his ethnic background, the latter does matter if other things are equal.

Politics professor B Venkatesh Kumar believes that such (linguistic) representation can make a difference.

“The right caste and language do matter. But the party must also be in a position to utilise the same and in Mumbai the Congress is organisationally very weak,” he said.

With 2014 elections two years away, the Congress has much to do. For starters, it needs to find Marathi leaders who can win over those who are dividing its votes between the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.