Congress lost touch with youth in Assam
By Barun Das Gupta
In contrast with the electoral performance of the Congress in neighbouring West Bengal, the party has come a cropper in Assam. The main reason for this is said to be the inability of the aging leadership of the Assam Congress to keep in touch with the hopes and aspirations of the younger generation. They want job, they want better education facilities, including technical education. The Congress got alienated from the youth who believed, even after seeing two years of the BJP rule at the Centre, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be able to deliver. This shows the extent of disillusionment of the youth with the Congress. The second factor that was responsible for the undoing of the Congress was the loosening grip of the octogenarian chief minister Tarun Gogoi on his cabinet colleagues and the administration. This gave scope for corruption to flourish. Several departments like Animal Husbandry, Drinking Water Supply and Food and Civil Supply earned a notoriety for corruption and loot of public money running into hundreds of crores of rupees. Many ministers in the Gogoi cabinet had to kiss the dust this time.
According to a former Congress MP, the anti-incumbency factor did play a part in Congress defeat. Gogoi had been the chief minister for an uninterrupted period of a decade and a half since 2001. The people wanted a change. Gogoi’s was anything but an inspiring leadership. In contrast, the BJP presented the far younger Sarbananda Sonowal, the current Sports Minister at the Centre, as the party’s chief ministerial candidate. It has paid off. He has won.
Sonowal has been in public life since the late 1970s when, still in his teens, he took a prominent part in the movement against the ‘illegal infiltrators’ from Bangladesh led by the All Assam Students Union (AASU). By 1992, he was the president of the student body. He later joined the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) which had ruled the State twice. Later he became frustrated with the faction-ridden AGP and left it to join the BJP. He has not looked back since then.
Can the Congress recover from the shock of the defeat it has suffered? Not immediately, says the ex-MP. At the moment it is an uphill task and it will take time. The Congress High Command, many grassroots level Congressmen feel, could not provide the type of dynamic leadership that was neededto attract and retain the youth. Some think that the High Command’s insistence that Gogoi should not be replaced till this election also cost the Congress heavily in terms of public support. Replacing Gogoi by a younger leader would have helped, they feel. But when they are asked, who could have been Gogoi’s successor, acceptable both to the people and the party, they fumble for a reply. The High Command also had a problem. Congress insiders say that during the later period of his office, Gogoi was not averse to quitting chief ministership but he wanted his son Gaurav Gogoi to succeed him. Reportedly, this idea did not find favour with the High Command.
The walking out of former minister Himanta Biswa Sharma with a number of Congress legislators last year and his eventually joining the BJP also damaged Congress prospects, some say. Sharma is an ambitious politician who wanted to be Chief minister himself. The central leaders were in no mood to oblige him – and for good reasons, too. But his leaving the Congress along with a number of legislators and joining the BJP was a development that could and should have been avoided by the party, they think. But that did not happen and ultimately he broke away from the party. The Assam poll outcome has also proved wrong those who thought that the politics of polarization that the BJP had pursued in Assam, which has about thirty-three per cent Muslim population, would drive the minority voters en masse to either the Congress or the AIUDF. The Congress could not get the minority vote to the extent it expected.
To revive the party in Assam the Congress needs a collective leadership of comparatively young leaders who can interact more readily with the younger generation, attune themselves to their needs, hopes and aspirations. The old leaders have to be phased out. For the present, however, it is the BJP which will rule the State for the next five years. The Congress leaders and workers are demoralized. The process of rejuvenation will require a farsighted and imaginative leadership. Whether Assam Congress can throw up such a leadership, future alone will say.(IPA Service)