Congress helped transform this city,thats why it should not downplay its MCD defeat Extrapolating municipal election results to the state or the national level is risky but when the state is Delhi and the party in question is the Congress,you are tempted to go out on a limb. With the BJP recording victories in all three of the municipal corporations created after the state governments decision to trifurcate the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in December last year,this election marks the first time in recent history that an incumbent has retained control of the civic body. The Congresss defeat makes it clear the city wasnt convinced that it could do a better job than the incumbent. This should seriously worry the party because all indicators pointed to Delhi as its stronghold. Sheila Dikshit has been chief minister since 1998 and despite the corruption cloud over the Commonwealth Games,her record has been a formidable one: Delhi is relatively well governed,with rapid infrastructure development having changed the citys urban landscape over the past 14 years. Its rapidly growing services sector and per capita income the highest in the country draw thousands of migrants into its fold every day. Be it air quality or mass transit,most quality-of-life indices have tangibly improved. Yet,the party failed to translate any of this into success. Perhaps the loss in Delhi was because of rising expectations from Indias most aspirational voters. The BJP will project its victory as the outcome of a popular discontent over corruption and the UPA government. Whatever the BJPs spin,the Congress must ask itself pointed questions. For,the defeat in Delhi could frame a larger predicament. The 2009 Lok Sabha verdict had underlined that the old common sense,of the BJP drawing the larger share of the urban vote and the Congress outperforming its rival in rural areas,may no longer hold. Yet the Congress,especially in UPA 2 and even in Delhi where it has much to boast of,has not come up with a political strategy that addresses itself to the urban aam admi (read the aspirational voter). Recently,the Congress failed to wrest the Mumbai municipality from the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. Earlier,in 2010,for the first time,it lost control of the Bangalore municipality. The loss in Delhi,clearly,speaks of a larger political incoherence. Downplaying it,as the Congress is doing,isnt a smart political response.
