How Rahul Gandhi may finish the Congress party
You don't need to be a mentalist to figure out that the Grand Old Party, as we know it under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, is on its last legs. Something will emerge from the debris is a given, but that is still some time away. The absence of rootedness to a cause, idea, or ideal, has cost Rahul Gandhi dearly, as he has been unable to burnish his equity with either the masses or the classes.
The Congress in any case is an amorphous organisation which wasn’t built on an edifice of ideological moorings. Mrs Gandhi may have introduced socialism, but the umbilical cord to that foundation too was cut abruptly by PV Narasimha Rao when faced with an overpowering economic crisis.
What may be of concern to the Congress party apparatchiks is that anti-Congressism seems to be peaking. But it will be disingenuous to say that the Congress is dead. Why can’t the Congress find its way out of this fusillade of fire? What prevents someone from grabbing it by the collar and shaking it out of the arms of Morpheus? Simple – the absence of leadership.
Vacuum
The Congress over time has looked to the Nehru-Gandhi family for direction and leadership, which in turn has led to a complete vacuum of second and thirdtier leaders. The leadership deficit is more acute now than at any given time in its recent history. Sonia Gandhi ably picked up the reins from the wasteland that Sitaram Kesri left behind. She rained on her own parade by wanting to remain the teflon woman, one who wielded all the power but wasn’t accountable for any of the decision-making. The baggage of the lost decade resulted in shame in May 2014.
However, Sonia did revive the Congress, just as Mrs Indira Gandhi did when she first smashed the syndicate headed by Kamaraj and then broke the Congress to displace S Nijalingappa and company. In the 1971 general elections, the INC (O) headed by Kamaraj and Co won about 10 per cent of the vote and 16 Lok Sabha seats, against 44 per cent of the vote and 352 seats for Indira's Congress. It was a rout. And Mrs Gandhi was taller than any other leader in the country. That she followed a path of Soviet socialism which was essentially pro-poor, stood her in good stead. Over the next few years, she repeatedly showed that she wore the boots, in the main with her emphatic return in 1980.
Jagjivan Ram walked out on Indira Gandhi. Her feeble attempt to circumvent his Ramlila Maidan rally speech was to use state broadcaster to air Bobby at the same hour. She survived the Emergency and the Janata Party experiment to storm back to power. In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi found his back being broken over Bofors when VP Singh, Arif Mohammed Khan and Arun Nehru left him to the wolves. But resolutely, someone from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has managed to pick up the pieces. Sonia was such a lodestar. The short point being that the Congress has a history of bouncing back. Unfortunately, the Congress lacks a credible face at the moment, one which convinces people to vote for it. Ten years of misrule saw its extremely soft underbelly being exposed by a resurgent Narendra Modi.
In many ways the Congress and the BJP were more or less on equal terms till the middle of last year. A brand new dynamic called Modi changed all equations. All bets were off once he entered the arena. Like a pit bull, he systematically scythed his way to the top. His appeal was that he promised development and growth, he did not at any given point digress from that agenda. He never ever spoke of the need to build Ram Mandir; instead he attacked relentlessly the morally corrosive nature of the Congress. As a political strategist, Modi is peerless much like Karl Von Clausewitz who said, “To achieve victory we must mass our forces at the hub of all power and movement, the enemy’s centre of gravity”. This is exactly what Modi has attempted to replicate successfully.
Anyway, this treatise is not about Modi, it is about the annihilation of the Congress. That Sonia Gandhi preferred a weak prime minister in Manmohan Singh has cost the Grand Old Party. The Congress requires a real politik rainmaker, someone who understands the art of war and political subterfuge. Sonia Gandhi never trusted those who understood these nuances – Pranab Mukherjee and Kamal Nath – and the party is the poorer for that. Ironically, the gene pool for the Congress has shrunk so much that there is a complete paucity of genuine talent. Look at the way it treated Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor recently – shabbily. It needs a firm hand, a hand that rocks the cradle as it were. An indifferent Sonia Gandhi, plagued by ill-health, isn’t the answer, as she doesn’t seem to have the energy or wherewithal to get her hands and feet dirty once again. That leaves Rahul Gandhi who has proved so far to be an abysmal failure. More so when pitted against a focused Modi.
Dissent
A fresh round of recriminations, dissent and dissonance has hit the Congress as they speak in different voices. The old guard are still loyal to the imperiled queen, while other voices like Digvijaya Singh are arguing for a leadership change and the anointment of Rahul Gandhi. But Rahul remains the prince who constantly runs away from his coronation. He too has been in the hurly burly of active politics for a decade, but he too wants to follow the "remote governance" model of his mother. In short, he wants responsibility without accountability. If the Congress isn’t careful, Modi will blindside them and arrive at his goal of a Congress Mukt Bharat. The Congress’ erosion has been rapid – it holds power in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Kerala and Assam of the bigger states. Over the next four and a half years, as many as 20 states go to the polls.
Over the last one year, BJP has been re-elected in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, won Goa and Rajasthan, installed a government for the first time in Maharashtra and Haryana, and of course won a landslide victory at the Centre, reducing the Congress to rubble, with just 44 seats. These are perilous times for the Congress as it runs into headwinds. It needs something to emerge from this churning, perhaps with a name other than Gandhi. That could be as difficult as finding the Scarlet Pimpernel.