India waits for a winning strategy from INDIA

The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) Report for the year 2022 reports a surge of 24.4 per cent in cybercrimes. A total of 65,893 cybercrime cases were registered across the country during 2022 against 52,974 cases in 2021.

Cyber fraud constituted majority of these cases—64.8 per cent), followed by extortion (5.5%), and sexual exploitation (5.2 per cent).

After the battering the Congress party suffered in the mini general elections in five states, the INDIA bloc of opposition parties will meet on December 19 in Delhi, to work on 'Main Nahin, Hum' motto to take on PM Narendra Modi and the BJP.

A party leader said that evolving a "core positive agenda", seat sharing and a programme to hold joint rallies, are among the main challenges before the opposition INDIA bloc.

There is no mention of the number of parties or leaders who are slated to attend the meet; an earlier meeting convened on December 6 was skipped by opposition bigwigs like Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and MK Stalin.

The INDIA alliance was looking for a fulcrum of support as they waited for the Assembly poll results but now that the Congress has been able to win only one of the five states, a rethinking of opposition plans and strategy ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections is no doubt on the anvil.

The state poll results prove beyond doubt that at least in the Hindi heartland states which form the bulk of parliament states, the Congress by going it alone cannot withstand the saffron juggernaut.

Its decision to go it alone in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan backfired and was surprising when a party like the Samajwadi Party had areas of support in districts in MP adjoining Uttar Pradesh.

In Rajasthan too, the Congress could have at least struck an informal arrangement with the BSP or the Bharat Adivasi Party which could have secured it a few thousand votes in many constituencies and helped the party tilt the scales in its favour vis-à-vis the BJP.

This is an age when pragmatism should take precedence over ideological dogmas or the tendency to cling to grandiose sentiments of the past.

The Congress is no longer the party it once was - it is in power on its own in only two states - Himachal Pradesh ad Karnataka. Its sphere of influence in the North-East has been taken over by the BJP and regional parties and its only source of comfort is South India.

But the South has a strength of only around 130 seats of the total 540 plus seats in the Lok Sabha and so the battle for the honours in 2024 will be decided by those who win a good chunk of seats in north, east, west and the north-east.

And if the opposition is hoping to stop a BJP landslide again in these regions, it will have to come up with a carefully devised strategy and strongly-knit alliances in these states.

For now, there does not seem to be any unity of purpose guiding the opposition parties many of which are yet to recover from the sweeping BJP victory in three of the four Hindi states which went to polls.

Each opposition party, going by the indications, seems to be guided by the self-interest of winning more seats on its own rather than being motivated by the common purpose of putting up a single candidate in most constituencies across the country if not all.

Any front of political parties works on common principles and a programme acceptable to all and this is where the parties are yet to find common ground.

While it would be a bit too much to expect the parties to come up all of a sudden with an acceptable candidate for PM if the INDIA alliance gets the required numbers in 2024, they could at least draw up a select list of senior leaders of national acceptance who could then decide on an ideal candidate for PM once the polls are over.

There is obviously a lot on the opposition platter when party leaders get together on December 19 and its leaders will have to smoothen out the rough edges besides ironing out differences if any.

It is not going to be easy but that’s the price one has to pay for power.