Assembly elections: How many young Congressmen should be in the CWC?

“Under the leadership of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party will unveil a vision for India in its upcoming Plenary Session from March 16-18, 2018. It's time to #ReclaimIndia,” tweeted the country’s longest-serving political party as it announced plans under the new management.
 
Rahul Gandhi took over as President of the Indian National Congress from his mother Sonia Gandhi in December 2017. Holding a plenary to ratify his appointment is a constitutional necessity. The Congress President’s mind and resources bank is the 24-member Congress Working Committee (CWC), elected by the 1200-strong electoral college of All India Congress Committee (AICC) members. A new CWC could be selected or elected — or both — at the plenary. This body will then become Gandhi’s imprimatur on the party.
 
As always when the Congress has been in the opposition, who’s in and who’s out in the new dispensation is subject matter of avid discussion.
 
Generational rivalries
 
Reconstituting a political party is perilous business.  There must be continuity, but change has to be brought too. Cabals inherited from previous regimes must be dismantled but pressure points on the leadership need to be nurtured. Competition must be encouraged but only up to a point — after all, no one can be bigger than the king. And above all, the secret is in the way the leadership poses the issues. For, it is the issues that define a political party and its base.
 
The composition of the CWC will address these questions. There are many in the party who believe age is only a number but there is an impatient new generation that is waiting to take over. Nothing illustrates this better than the dilemma in Rajasthan.  Ashok Gehlot, former chief minister and union minister, was Gandhi’s sherpa in Gujarat (as party general secretary in-charge), a state where the party could not form the government but continues to believe it won a moral victory. But equally, the victory in the recent by-elections to the Alwar and Ajmer Lok Sabha seats was scripted by Sachin Pilot, chief of the Rajasthan unit and from Gandhi’s generation. With the prospects of a Congress victory in the Rajasthan assembly elections later this year, who should be given primacy — Gehlot or Pilot?
 
In Madhya Pradesh, another poll-bound state where the Congress and the BJP are pitted against each other in a straight fight, whom should it be —Jyotiraditya Scindia who is from Gandhi’s generation  and associated with royalty; Kamal Nath, his father's associate, an undeniably successful manager and one of the longest serving members of the Lok Sabha; or Digvijaya Singh, former chief minister with state-wide brand recognition (who is currently in the last lap of a state-wide yatra and remarked famously that he certainly had not undertaken it to sell pakodas)?
 
How many young Congressmen should be in the CWC? From current indications, Gandhi will continue the practice his mother followed — no election, only selection of the CWC. Not that this is new.
 
During the time of P V Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister, when the Gandhi family was not in command, elections to the CWC were ordered. But when his principal rival Arjun Singh and others like Rajesh Pilot and Sharad Pawar won, he ordered that the CWC be reconstituted because the party had not voted in any ‘Dalit, tribal and women members’. What followed was a quasi-elected quasi-selected CWC.

Old Vs New

Updated outlook
 
But Gandhi has also signalled that change is nigh. For the first time, the Congress has a data analytics department, headed by investment banker and political economic Praveen Chakravarty. The party’s social media cell has a new chief in actor Ramya and her team. There is a strategy cell under the overall guidance of IIM professor Rajiv Gowda that is tasked with research and produces documents critiquing government policy. Gandhi is deeply invested in all these ventures.
 
This is reflected in a new language the Congress is speaking. Consider the contrast between Gandhi’s mien at the annual general meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in 2013 and his meeting with diaspora in Singapore last week.
 
In 2013, he was hesitant, tentative, defensive. “If you struggle in your work, slow decision making not acceptable,” he told the gathering, adding: “I get the sense and know what it feels like when you go to an AGM with bad news”. It was the language of a party on its way out of power. In Singapore last week, he was clear what the Congress would do if it came to power. It will follow a foreign policy that is strategic, not episodic, like the BJP, he declared, adding “I don’t buy the idea that India can’t challenge and compete with China in manufacturing”. There was a time when Gandhi used to talk only about “povertification”. Now, he’s talking about encouraging corporations but ensuring they are humane.
 
Gandhi’s team that goes abroad with him is different from the one that used to accompany his mother. Then it was K Natwar Singh, Jairam Ramesh, Murli Deora and Manmohan Singh. With the new Congress president, it is Sam Pitroda, Milind Deora, Madhu Gaud Yaskhi and Shashi Tharoor.
 
So, it might be facing electoral reverses. But the Congress is changing. What it does not have is the luxury of self-indulgence and time.