Revitalising Congress party is not just a leadership issue

Party has no new programme and vision to offer to the people; it rings hollow because it activates itself only months before an election.

The unhappy elements of the Congress, the G-23, are louder since the party’s election debacle to five state legislatures. Even Congress president Sonia Gandhi seems to have bought into their rhetoric that the problems of the Congress would be solved by leadership change. Or so it would seem from her knee-jerk response in sacking the state unit presidents in the five states that went to polls and offering that the Gandhi family would step down from leadership of the party.

The real problem with the Congress is not of leadership or of leaving out G-23 members from the decision-making process. It has no new programme and vision to offer to the people or if it does; it rings hollow because the party activates itself only months before an election.

Removing state Congress presidents after the poll debacle across the board is also patently wrong. There is no reason to blame the Uttar Pradesh debacle on Ajay Kumar Lallu, for example. The campaign in UP was Priyanka Gandhi’s show--and it was ultimately her failure despite a spectacularly energetic election campaign

Even if a so-called “collective leadership” or one of the leading lights of the G-23 had led the election campaign in UP, the results would have been no different. Its 2.3 percent vote share in UP shows that the Congress does not represent any section of the castes and communities in the state--it has no social base left.

In Punjab, the Congress should have never appointed Navjot Singh Sidhu. Given his destructive attitude, it should have removed him as state party chief even when the elections had been announced. In adjoining Uttarakhand just 6 percent floating voters separated the BJP (44 percent) and the Congress (38 percent) although both compete for the same upper caste social base of Thakurs and Brahmins. Sacking the state president will change nothing there. Similarly, in Goa (23 percent vote share), the Congress still retains a social base, although a diminished one. In Manipur, like in other adjoining north-eastern states, horse-trading is the name of the game and therefore changing the party president there will also achieve nothing.

The voters will continue to dismiss the Congress as a losing proposition until it offers them a new and imaginative deal. The Congress must recall its success in the United Progressive Alliance government in lifting nearly 140 million people out of poverty and giving protection to the marginalised through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act, the National Food Security Act, the Right to Education Act offering free and quality elementary education to children, the Right to Information Act, etc. In short, economic reforms were accompanied by redistributive policies. The party needs to present a welfarist economic model to the nation, capable of tackling institutionalised inequities and inequality in society.

At the moment, a mere change of leadership may not change voters’ perception significantly. Those demanding that the Gandhis leave the Congress party, should consider that it is only the two Gandhi siblings and their mother about whom it can be said that they will never join the BJP. They are the only link, for better or worse, to the idea of India that the Congress represents. Without them, no Opposition formation will give the party its due weight in 2024.

In Rahul Gandhi the party still has its most robust ideological opponent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Priyanka Gandhi ran a high-octane campaign for the party in UP--something that the party has not seen recently. It is just that the siblings have not been able to deliver electoral victory on a platter for which ambitious party functionaries are demanding their heads.

If the Gandhis are passe then one only has to look at the political has-beens among the G-23, who would not have been in positions of power without the friendly leg up by the Gandhis themselves. Not one of them is a faction-leader like Chandra Shekhar, Mohan Dharia, and Ashoka Mehta of yore or more recently, like Arjun Singh, N D Tewari, P V Naraimha Rao or Sharad Pawar. They do not have the following to blaze their own trail. Their voices seem loud and strong--even intimidating because they are well-connected in the Lutyens media. Many will not hesitate to jump ship if their ambitions are not fulfilled. One has already done so.

However, the party should take on board the suggestion for elections to the Central Election Committee and Parliamentary Board, a practice that Rajiv Gandhi did away with. These elected bodies would ensure that mistakes such as those made in Punjab--both in appointing a new state unit chief as well in choosing a new chief minister--will be avoided. And if the party wanted to create a new social base among women in UP by reserving 40 per cent seats, it would be after careful deliberation.

There is still space in the country for the inclusive ideology that the Congress represents. However, the party needs to focus both on presenting a new deal to the voters, and working continuously at it and not just parachuting into a state a few months before the elections.

The party should learn from the BJP: even while its cadres were still exulting after the UP victory, it had already begun its election campaign for Gujarat. Before the 2024 general election, there are legislative elections due in ten states: Himachal and Gujarat this year, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana. Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya the next year. The Congress should start working at the ground level in these states from now.

Revitalising the Congress is a long-term project. This will not happen without the Gandhis playing a central role--elected or unelected-- in that process. There could be many more electoral debacles in the years to come--till the opiate of hate, majoritarianism and demagogic leadership wears off in large parts of Northern India. The Congress will still have to continue to work towards freeing the masses from the enervating miasma of hate and divisiveness.