By Chiranjib Haldar
A growing bonhomie between two partners need not always culminate in a relationship. Just as courting often don’t translate into nuptials, the partnership between poll strategist Prashant Kishor and the Congress has fizzled out. For nearly two years, the two have been holding parleys, discussing, articulating galore and manoeuvring but any chance of a fruition has just faded out. Many from the Congress have actually called Prashant Kishor the impresario, ideologically agnostic or opportunistic. There may have been a lot of drastic changes Prashant Kishor wanted and the Congress stalwarts were not in sync with those.
Many analysts are curious to know whether it was Prashant Kishor’s loss in rejecting the Congress when the party was already at its nadir or was his threadbare capability as a planner overestimated. One line of thought has been that if he joined the grand old dame of Indian polity, it would be restored to its former glory. So, was Prashant Kishor trying to be a panacea to all ills befitting the party, one who could turn around its sinking fortunes? After this drama unfolded and wrapped up, the century old satirical assertion that the more things change they remain the same, seemed to be an apt aphorism for the Congress.
The Congress party not undergoing radical transformation in tune with the times is indeed a momentous denouement for Indian democracy. If any Indian political party needs to alter its ethos and go in for a paradigm shift, it is the Congress. The party still remains complacent despite terrible setbacks and political humiliation. The existential crisis within the party that panellists always debated about in primetime television shows seems real. Being nostalgic about governing the nation for 54 of its 75 years since independence and misconstruing a national footprint for popularity or still having leaders of opposition in many states is merely delusional. It seems to be embedded in the psyche of the party.
Many within the Congress were enthusiastic that if Prashant Kishor actually evolved a winning strategy for the once illustrious party, it would wake up from its deepest slumber. A section of the party leadership saw adrenalin rushing into its moribund cadres with the advent of a poll mastermind. Change was inevitable, they felt and only a strategist like Prashant Kishor could have sowed the urgent fillip to change. The Congress suffers from a decaying leadership in many states which turned a cropper in election after election.
Most diehard Congressmen still have many in the higher echelons of the country, opine that the only party which has a track record of establishing India’s democratic institutions would peter out of the political landscape if governance within the party remains lackadaisical. It is not wishful thinking that the grand old party desperately needs a metamorphosis both structural and organisational.
There are those who feel Prashant Kishor could have been one of the disruptors brought in to energise the party. He could have facilitated the wake-up call and given the cadres a booster dose against organisational apathy. The Empowered Committee set up by the Congress is dysfunctional since it has most Rajya Sabha MPs who may not have the wherewithal to win polls. The leadership has to identify potential winners because ultimately it is electoral victories more than ideological prowess that can help regain its glory. There seems to be a tug-of-war in the Congress. Status quoists within the party shun any kind of experimentation pitched against those in favour of change and who always oppose freezing the organisation in a time warp.True, change has to be dramatic and not incremental to overhaul a mammoth organisation. Prashant Kishor could have been one of the many catalysts for the party. Perhaps, Prashant Kishor may have got it wrong in terms of political brinkmanship. In politics, one can’t just nurture and groom political leaders like brands and in the forefront be a leader, especially in an organisation like the Congress. Prashant Kishor may have visualised his role play in a manner antithetical to a gamechanger. Perhaps, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He also hobnobbed with K. Chandrasekhar Rao in Telangana simultaneously which was an eyesore for the Gandhis since the Congress and TRS are at loggerheads. When the Congress initially started warming up to him, there was his own organisation I-PAC lurking in the background with its business interests. The party was aware that it needed an antidote for its revival.
Some commentators opined that Rahul Gandhi was totally opposed to the deal with Prashant Kishor because of a lack of trust and conviction. The outpourings were also there on social media that the party needed a Chanakya, not a business manager. The G-23 went a step further. It stressed that bringing on Prashant Kishor was only a camouflage to put a lid on any leadership change in the party which the Group had demanded. In the end, there was a frenetic blunting of the edges. The sycophants within the party Prashant Kishor wanted to ease out, craftily got him ousted in a game of political one-upmanship. We often hear from critics that the party think-tank is encircled by the old caucus and may not be advising the hierarchy in earnest. Truth is, many esteemed members of the G-23 were actually members of the Congress Working Committee and never asked for inner party democracy or organisational elections when they were at the helm of affairs.Ultimately to survive in politics, a party needs to be in power and win the hustings. India has undergone a metamorphosis in the sense that it is far more technologically advanced than it was in the halycon socialist days where power emanated from select quarters. It is a social media literate nation now where dissemination, public opinion and expectations galore cannot be brushed aside with ideology and past credentials. A political party cannot remain frozen in a time warp and insulated from change.
After the party’s Lok Sabha debacle in 2019, Rahul Gandhi had stated ‘It is a habit in India that the powerful cling to power, no one sacrifices power. But we will not defeat our opponents without sacrificing the desire for power and fighting a deeper ideological battle.’ That was his predicament. The Congress party still believes that it is the only durable, enduring brand and people would embrace it again once they see through the fallacies of the current dispensation. Congress loyalists cutting across factions are unanimous that the party needs to resolve its existential, ideological, organisational crisis first. Though Prashant Kishor was not a fixit to these crises, the Congress party’s failure to join hands with him showed it was averse to change and dismisses any kind of change agent or facilitator as an enemy satrap.
(The writer is a commentator on politics and society.)