CONGRESS DILEMMA SEES NO SIGNS OF ABATING
By Amulya Ganguli
There was an English monarch in the 11th century called Ethelred the Unready. Being 10 years old, he sought advice from those around him, mainly to fight the Vikings. But, the counsellors usually gave him what turned out to be the wrong advice. The phrase, unready, in the king’s name implied “badly advised”.
Ten centuries later, there is another would-be king in one of England’s former colonies who is thought to be unprepared for his coronation even by his doting mother and fawning courtiers.
Hence, the decision to extend his mother’s term at the helm for another year. It will not be till well after the middle of next year, therefore, that Rahul Gandhi’s name will be considered for the Congress president’s post. But, the delay is unlikely to improve his prospects.
For one, there is little likelihood of the crown prince maturing over the next 12 months to enable him to switch from his carping one-liners – suit-boot ki sarkar – to a detailed exposition of how the Narendra Modi government’s quest for industrialization is harmful for the country and the reasons why his own agriculture-driven economic model holds all the answers.
For another, the delay of a year for a change of guard will make it even more difficult for the Congress to explain what nearly two decades of Sonia Gandhi’s presidency has achieved for the party. Not only has it slumped to its lowest ever Lok Sabha tally, there are now doubts about the eligibility of her chosen successor as well.
It is clear, therefore, that Sonia has brought the 130-year-old party to its nadir. There is now no certainty about either its next president or about its outlook unless Rahul’s claim that he is “left of the left”, which is echoed by finance minister Arun Jaitley’s charge that the Congress has positioned itself to the “left of Marx”, is taken seriously.
However, what these attempts at humour and sarcasm underline is an absence of an identifiable ideology. Does Rahul’s criticism of Modi’s pro-market policies mean that the Congress is against economic reforms ? If so, does he want a return to the licence-permit-control raj ?
But, it is probably not Rahul’s ideological vagueness alone which led to the reluctance of a party as sycophantic as the Congress to demur to his elevation to the president’s post, but also the belief that his woolly thinking cannot be the basis for the party’s revival at a time when it faces crucial elections in Bihar, Assam, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere.
If the Congress stumbles yet again as it has already done in the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bengaluru civil elections, there may be virtually an irreparable setback to its hopes of recovery. What is a good sign, however, is that the Congress appears to have finally recognized the deficiencies of the heir-apparent. So has his mother, who must be deeply disheartened by the obvious collapse of her dream of extending the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s hold on the party.
A stage has now been reached when Sonia will not be able to step down in the near future even though she is not in the best of health. Nor will it be politic to search for someone other than Rahul to be her successor unless it is Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, who is favoured for the top post by large sections in the party.
But, such a step will be too severe a blow to Rahul’s prestige and too disruptive organizationally to be a feasible proposition. Yet, it will be politically fatal for the Congress to allow things to remain as they are where the party’s weakness is compounded by uncertainty about the leadership.
The reason for bringing the 130-year-old organization to its present sorry pass is undoubtedly the failure of the so-called high command to prepare for the future both in terms of choosing Sonia’s successor and determining the party’s economic outlook which appeals to the aspirational generation.
The mistake which the high command, comprising mother and son and a few confidants, made was to believe in the aftermath of its return to power in 2004 that the party could forge ahead with Rahul as the president after Sonia stepped down, with pro- poor polices .
On both counts, the formerly Grand Old Party took the wrong turn in 2010-11 when it was riding high. By persuading the government to take its “foot off the accelerator of reforms”, as then finance minister P. Chidambaram subsequently said, the leftists in the Congress allowed Narendra Modi to grab the headlines with his promise of economic growth.
Now, in following its massive defeat in the last general election, the Congress is grappling with its other mistake of having reposed too much faith in Rahul’s ability to live up to the challenges of rebuilding the party and delineating an economic outlook in sync with a globalized world.
The best course for the Congress will be not only to make the high command more broad-based but also to let its members to speak more freely than what they may have done till now and not cow down those who, like Shashi Tharoor, express views which are different from those of the mother and the son on, say, the disruption of parliament. Only the restoration of internal democracy can revive the Congress.(IPA Service)