National

Wring Thy Hands

The Congress is back to its coterie-driven days. It's bad news for '09.

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Wring Thy Hands
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A joke doing the rounds sums up the mood. A man goes to buy a Mercedes. The salesman is reluctant to permit a test-drive but ultimately agrees and accompanies the customer. The car drives smoothly for awhile but then, shudders to a halt. The angry customer asks for an explanation. The salesman’s response: "The engine hasn’t been fitted in...that’s what I was trying to tell you." The amazed customer asks: "But it drove 10 km?" The reply? "Oh, that was on the strength of its reputation."

Brand Congress may still occasionally ensure that in party bastions such as Karnataka—over-represented at the AICC headquarters with six CWC members—its support base is more or less intact. But that’s clearly not good enough to win an election any longer.

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At the heart of the current crisis in the party is an ineffective central leadership, one no longer prepared to take tough decisions. Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s finest hour came in 2004 when she demonstrated her ability to lead from the front, when she listened to her "inner voice". Says senior party leader Devendra Dwivedi, "Sonia Gandhi post-2004 enhanced her credibility after leading the party to victory." Unfortunately, since ’04 she’s slipped, trying to please too many people, including those who have long crossed their "use by" date. She is too dependent on a self-serving coterie whose members are only interested in maintaining their proximity to her. A phrase carelessly flung around in this circle is "don’t rock the boat", except that this isn’t the Congress boat, it’s the one in which the inner circle floats.

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Typically, most Congressmen wouldn’t dare criticise Sonia, even privately. The worst said of her, till now, is as a key cabinet minister’s quote to Outlook: "Poor lady, how many things can she keep an eye on? She wants to carry everyone...so she gets misled." A senior party functionary has been more critical lately. He calls it a crisis of "declining legitimacy," adding that if Sonia has imbibed the "limits of power", she should now understand the "potential of power" to set the party in order. Of late, some dissenting voices too have emerged: a cabinet minister, thoroughly disillusioned with the way things are run, says "it’s time to acknowledge the fact that she is a disaster."

The lack of transparency has ensured that only the victims know how they were done in. The lack of structure and vibrant healthy party institutions suits those who "control" Sonia. It ensures that no new leaders—from the district to the national level—emerge.

A senior leader close to both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi told Outlook: "The party has become minister-centric, with those in the organisation playing second fiddle. If those in the party are not MPs or mlas, how are they expected to sustain themselves? The entire edifice is collapsing. In the absence of any new people emerging, Sonia is forced to recycle the old ones." Those whom she trusts are overworked—so MoS in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan is also MoS, Personnel, and general secretary in charge of the Northeast, Karnataka and J&K.

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Indeed, the Congress’s reluctance to project chief ministerial candidates is now the subject of a raging debate: an increasing number of party leaders are now saying it’s time the Congress started naming its candidates for top jobs. Of course, die-hard supporters of the old party line such as CWC member Satyavrat Chaturvedi still argue that it’s "unconstitutional to project a CM/PM before an election as the Constitution provides for elected legislators to elect their leaders".

Meanwhile, the Congress has more pressing problems, such as its inability to accept that it now has to simultaneously tackle two or more fronts, a national party like the BJP, while keeping smaller parties like the JD(S) at bay. Speaking of the Karnataka polls, Chavan says, "We wanted this to be an election between two national parties. We succeeded partially, but the JD(S) didn’t do as badly as we had anticipated; it led to a division in the secular vote." But is his hope that the Congress will eventually succeed in eliminating the smaller parties a realistic one?

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Knock,knock: A deserted AICC office after the Karnataka defeat

Referring to the forthcoming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, a state leader says, "If we only had to tackle the incumbent BJP government in MP, we’d sail through. But we have to tackle the bsp which will eat into our Dalit vote, the Gondwana party that will challenge us in the tribal belt and the Samajwadi Party that will compete for the Muslim vote."

Indeed, all the ills that plague the party were on display in the just-concluded Karnataka elections. It included a dysfunctional party machine, factionalism, an uneven choice in candidates, and failure to counter the BJP’s emotive campaign on terror and rising prices. Little wonder then that with key state elections scheduled for 2008-end in MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, J&K and Delhi, and general elections in 2009, the leadership is finally looking worried, especially as its record so far has been spectacularly poor. It has lost 12 states since ’04, including five in which it was in power; five in which it has not been in power for well over a decade; and two states, Nagaland and Karnataka, where it is still considered a major force. The Karnataka debacle though is particularly significant. The Congress not only had a reasonable chance of winning the state but in defeat has marked the BJP’s entry into the South.

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So what can one expect from the Congress in the coming months? A CWC meeting has been called on May 31, but there are few expectations of any sweeping changes. A senior leader said, "When we faced electoral debacles in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Gujarat, we’d expected an internal review. I’d hoped we would utilise our collective wisdom to identify the causes of our failures so that we wouldn’t repeat them again. I can only say that I hope there will be a serious review now." Indeed, shaken by Karnataka, the Gujarat unit is now planning a manthan shivir in Dwaraka on June 7-8.

But in the end, it is also about communication in an age when television has rewritten the rules of election campaigns, where small corner meetings are rapidly replacing mega rallies. Says senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid, "Our dilemma is our inability to sell an outstanding social programme. Why are we not able to sell the message of Bharat Nirman, of the NREGA, of the RTI? After all, they collectively represent an idea, a vision—that of equitable inclusive growth. We need to devise a campaign that will speak. Communication has always been important but it is far more important now. If we are to turn things around, there must be not just a grand idea, but the energy and passion to sell it, too."

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