By Sondip Bhattacharya
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of India’s oldest political party? Sacrilege, pure sacrilege any true-blooded party man would protest. Nothing can destroy the party, not even ten BJP’s, ten Mayawatis or a hundred Marxists, the man would foolhardily insist. There is no question of the party declining, let alone disappearing as long as the anchor of the Gandhi dynasty is there.
Yes, there is the question how is the party to be administered, a slightly more rational acolyte might-chip in. Unwittingly the man is putting his finger right where it is hurting the party most. It just appears to be unable to find a way of running its affair. Looking at the party headquarters in Janpath you would perhaps run away with the impression that everything is honky dory with flunkies fitting in and out of office rooms, each door flaunting the nameplate of one or the other functionary, portraits of the clan’s presiding deity, Sonia Gandhi and her heir apparent Rahul Gandhi looking down on you with a most benign smile.
The truth of the Congress party’s plight lies out there in the open away from Janpath and in the far corners of this vast land of ours. And the picture that you see as you look around yourself does not bode well. You see the party structure in the states non-existent or on the verge of collapse. Even in the states where it rules, its organisation lies in ruins, consumed by factional feuds and very little to inspire confidence among the people or even among rank and file party workers. The process of division in fact goes right down the ranks. Party workers are known as “this Sahab’s” or “that Sahab’s” men; very few will say they are Congressmen. And the sahab on the ascendant does not must enjoy the mandatory “shabashi”
(blessings) of Sonia Gandhi.
From North east to Gujarat from Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala from Maharashtra to Andhra, let alone Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Orissa, which the party has virtually given up on, the Congress, is on a downslide. Ironically both in Andhra and Maharashtra, where the Congress is ruling, either independently or in a coalition, the party appears to be set on a suicidal course.
The Maharashtra Congress may be divided (even the legislature party) over the continuance in office of chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh but who is to decide. Evidently, Sonia Gandhi, and she seems always to be working on strategies, not concerning the future of the party in the state, but which of the prospective replacements can be trusted by the dynasty. It may be a Sushil Kumar Shinde or who knows the unreliable former Shiv Sena CM Narayan Rane. One would have expected the party headquarters to solve the Maharashtra puzzle in a manner that would in the short and long run help strengthen the party there. In the end though it may find itself playing second fiddle to partner Sharad Pawar’s NCP or who knows even watching from the Opposition benches as a future Shiv Sena-BJP government takes over.
Its performance as the ruling party and its future prospects are indeed bleak in Andhra as well. Chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy had refused to grow into anything more than a faction leader. In Tamil Nadu the party of C. Rajagoplachan and K. Kamaraj has learnt to live by hanging on to the coat tails of the regional parties. Its marginally better parliamentary poll performance in the state the last time over was the result mainly of a benign smile thrown at it by the DMK boss Karunanidhi. In Kerala where the party had a reasonably strong organizational base it stands as divided as never before.
The desperate attempt by the party hierarchy to somewhat retrieve the lost ground in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan must for the present remain a distant dream. The party predictably has fallen back on the dynasty to help a recovery by investing one of its “prime assets” in the process. Rahul Gandhi, the nation has been told, will be embarking on a countrywide yatra. It may perhaps not be a bad idea, but what is the yatra expected to achieve in the absence of an organisational structure. One can be sure that the states where Congress is in power will spare little effort to make the “yatra” a spectacular success but how would that help his party given that it has almost entirely lost its cadres. The state party leaders everywhere have, borrowing a leaf from the dynasty’s book, planted their men in places of influence and these blue-eyed boys spend most of their time in running down their “Saheb’s” opponents within the party. The decline of the Congress Party these past few years has been palpable and I don’t buy the line “we won this state or that” because of Soniaji’s leadership.
The over-dependence on the dynasty from the days of Indira Gandhi has frankly resulted in the party withering from within, even as the political map of the country has virtually been rewritten. The party’s role, its pan-Indian vision and its belief that the country’s interests are intertwined with its own, has since been challenged by a broad mix of regional, caste and communal politics. From being an umbrella party, which represented all sections of society and all regions it now represents none. A senior party leader and cabinet minister the other day bemoaned the fact that the grand old party was virtually rudderless. Speaking more in anguish than anything else he told me that it has become impossible even to broach subjects that might be unpalatable to some. Nobody is bothered, as he did not confide to set the house in order vis-à-vis the party organisation, nor does it know how to respond to the challenge to its fading hegemony from regional, caste and communal politics. “Rahul is bright youngman but so thoroughly inexperienced. And unlike Rajiv in his initial stages Rahul is turning put to be a slow learner.”You can’t expect him to revive a party which is almost paralyzed just now. Yes, it is paralyzed not just in physical terms, our thinking too seems to have paralysed. “He spoke of the days when Narsimha Rao had tried to reform the functioning of the party and how quickly he was forced to recognise the forces that were opposed to change and made to accept the Congress “reality”. But Rao, my man said, had indeed tried to infuse new life into the party but was thwarted by those within.INAV