Days before last year’s elections to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Sharad Pawar’s NCP seemed to be on its last legs, as practically every stalwart or leader of consequence had been poached by the BJP. The Congress was only slightly better off with some committed leaders still hanging on to the sinking ship with their fingernails. In the division of the 288 seats between the two allies, Pawar demanded 125 and Sonia Gandhi handed him those seats without demur.
A senior Congress leader protested at that complete lack of a fightback from the party. The interim Congress president then told him, “Tell me, do we have anybody of the stature of Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra who will deliver to us a respectable number of seats? Find me someone like him. Until then he is our party’s only hope in that state.”Under the circumstances, Pawar delivered to Sonia Gandhi not only double the seats—44—the Congress had hoped to win (which was also two more than the 42 it had won in 2014 with an incumbent chief minister in office), but also, miraculously, a government in the state. But the episode only goes to prove that there is a recognition, at least within the top Congress leadership, of the dismal state of affairs within the party and the need for a strong regional leadership to overcome their problems. Pawar, after all, was driven out of the Congress not once but twice as his strong leadership was unacceptable to the powers that be. And,
yet, the qualities that drove him out of the Congress were the very ones sought after by the party leadership in its frantic bid to rescue the party from complete ignominy during the elections.The Nehru-Gandhis are often accused of holding the party to ransom but the above anecdote proves that while they have the capacity to recognise the party’s shortcomings, it is often the second-rung leadership—like the one that had objected to the NCP president being given due importance—who are shackling the party and preventing it from getting up on its feet. Sandeep Dixit, the party’s former MP, recently raised the issue of a comatose party incapable of finding a leader in the wake of Rahul Gandhi’s resignation as party president 10 months ago (does it or should it really take that long?) However, it is people like Dixit and some other prominent dynasts, who have recently been in Twitter spats with each other, who are as much part of the problem as the ancient leadership of the party that the Congress inherited from Sanjay Gandhi in the post-Emergency era.
Their tug of war with each other at all levels is destroying the party.When Indira Gandhi first took over party and government, the old guard in the Congress had believed she would be a goongi gudiya (dumb doll) they could manipulate to their own ends. While she soon disabused them of that idea, the Sanjay Gandhi loyalists around Sonia had better luck. Sonia, handicapped by her origins, was sensitive to Indian sentiments and this new syndicate has more often than not got away by blackmailing her into doing things their way, because, seemingly, they understood the Indian way better than her. Rahul’s handicap with these leaders was that they would overturn his decisions by appealing to Sonia on precisely these grounds, with the additional handle of the ruling party propaganda against her son of being immature and clueless. As one senior Congress leader told me, “It is not Narendra Modi or the BJP that are responsible for the destruction of our party.
It is we ourselves who have brought it to this sorry state—the entitled dynasts who disappear every five years after losing elections and yet expect the people to vote for them and the senior leadership who should have been long retired, but continue to cling to positions of power in party or government and perpetrate their own dynasties.”In between these two extremes, this leader says, there is a whole army of committed party workers who, despite the party’s dismal state of affairs, have not been swayed from their ideology or tempted to join those in power. The Congress ideology still thrives on the ground but the Congress party does not, he says in despair.
So what must the Congress do for revival? In the first place, merit rather than any prior claims to privilege, whether by the younger dynasts or old guard, should be the sole ground on which a party leadership should be created. Secondly, the central leadership has to have the courage to allow a strong leadership to grow in every state and tackle it accordingly. The fear of a challenge from these regional satraps is what has destroyed the Congress centrally, but it stands to reason that strong regional leaders with high stakes in their own states will ensure that the sum of their parts help the party become a whole new body again that could mount a suitable challenge to whoever they wish—and these include regional parties in various states with ideologies similar to that of the Congress, which have grown essentially because the grand old party failed to meet the aspirations of the local people. As Pawar once told me, “The problem with the Congress is that they do not know how to reach out to the people. That is why they are so dependent on the Gandhis.” Well, this time it was the Gandhis who outsourced their outreach to Pawar. This says quite a lot about the state of their party.
Sujata Anandan
Senior journalist and political commentator Email: sujata.anandan@gmail.com