General elections are over three years away and the Congress is still struggling to shrug off its electoral crisis. Yet, obvious impediments haven’t deterred Rahul Gandhi from promising agitated farmers that a Congress government at the Centre will consign the three controversial agriculture laws to a “wastepaper bin”. Rahul’s promise may sound high on rhetoric but the Congress is hoping that the unrest ignited in the farming community by the recently-passed farm laws won’t go cold anytime soon.
So, while Rahul toured Punjab and Haryana—the epicentre of the protests—on a tractor as part of his party’s Kheti Bachao Yatra, the party has worked out a multi-pronged strategy to corner the Modi government over the contentious legislations. The Congress has already organised street protests by party workers across the country and submitted memorandums to governors against the “anti-farmer laws” while senior leaders have held a series of press conferences in state capitals explaining their opposition to the...