A hint of a farce

In 1963, just after the trauma of the border war with China, the Congress lost three high-profile parliamentary byelections in quick succession. Jawaharlal Nehru called a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee within a week to devise a plan to reinvigorate the party. Indira Gandhi did roughly the same thing after the 1967 general elections because the Congress’ majority in the Lok Sabha was reduced by 82 seats.

How odd it is therefore that after suffering the most shattering defeat in its entire history — its tally in the Lok Sabha plummeted from 206 to pitiable 44, followed by a similar fate in several state Assembly polls — today’s Congress leadership took seven months to hold a meeting of the Congress Working Committee to start exploring how to revive the nearly decimated party. To be sure, an earlier meeting of the CWC was held soon after May 16, 2014, but, regrettably, it was nothing more than a pre-scripted comic opera. At the meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son and the party’s vice-president, Rahul Gandhi, accepted responsibility for the electoral debacle and offered to resign. As if on cue, the entire congregation of loyalists shouted “No, No”, and that was the end of the event.

This time around the discussions at the CWC were longer but not conclusive. The ideas exchanged were sometimes vague and even confusing. Some members felt encouraged that the Modi sarkar has already given enough indications that it would make serious mistakes to annoy the people and, thus, give the Congress the opportunity it needs. Mrs Gandhi used the occasion to slam Narendra Modi’s government for having unleashed “ordinance raj”, and her party has already started an agitation against the ordinance on land acquisition.

For it believes, justifiably, that the changes the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s ordinance has made in the original bill, agreed upon and voted by both sides, favour private industrialists at the cost of farmers. Whether the Congress and other parties in the Rajya Sabha would disrupt the Upper House to resist the land ordinance remains to be seen. However, the Congress will do well to recognise that there is a strong feeling in the country against disruption of Parliament for any reason. At the same time, Mr Modi and his cohorts must realise that the total waste of the Rajya Sabha’s time during the Winter Session was at least partly caused by the Prime Minister’s unacceptable refusal to speak on subjects like re-conversions or “ghar wapsi” on which the country has a right to hear his views.

That, however, is a different matter. At present we are discussing the Congress Party’s ability or inability to revive itself, if only because a parliamentary democracy cannot be a success without an effective and large enough Opposition. From this standpoint, before defining the Congress’ ideology and deciding its organisational structure, the party must first take a clear decision on the future role and position of Mr Gandhi. So far the confusion on these has been confounded by his own reluctance.

When he was elected vice-president of the party on January 19, 2013, it was taken for granted by ecstatic Congressmen that he was India’s Prime Minister-in-waiting. However, later he was appointed chairman of the Congress Campaign Committee but not declared the party’s prime ministerial nominee. His performance in the 2014 parliamentary election has been appallingly poor, and it was no better at the time of Assembly elections in Bihar in 2010 and in Uttar Pradesh two years later. In both states he was the party’s sole campaigner, and in both the Congress had to bite the dust.

In two books on the 2014 elections — Rajdeep Sardesai’s 2014: The Election that Changed India and Harish Khare’s How Modi Won It — there is hardly a chapter in which young Mr Gandhi’s stark failures and serious lapses have not been catalogued. At one place Sardesai quotes former Israeli Prime Minister, Abba Eban, to the effect: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, and adds: “Much the same can be said of Rahul Gandhi in 2011 and 2012…”

The two crucial missed opportunities mentioned are Anna Hazare’s famous agitation against corruption and for the appointment of a Lok Pal and the massive agitation against a gangrape and murder in a Delhi bus that led to a mammoth agitation in the capital. Mr Gandhi was as usual conspicuous by his absence from the scene. In a more forthright passage, Khare writes: “In a global mood of subversion, questioning, defiance and interrogation, the idea of Rahul Gandhi’s entitlement to lead us was an intellectual and emotional oddity… Rather the Congress’… sycophancy ensured that the young man was seen by India as an unworthy usurper.”

Against this backdrop, it is remarkable that during the days preceding the CWC’s meeting, political circles in Delhi were abuzz with reports that the committee would “promote Mr Gandhi to the office of Congress president.” Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had been demanding this for months and even those of his colleagues who disagree with him in private chose to support him publicly. Yet this idea was not even whispered at the meeting. This could not have happened without a signal from the Congress president.

Moreover, she gave the state units much greater autonomy in their functioning than her son was prepared to concede. She also overruled her son’s directive to the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee to cut to half its proposal to have a 400-member executive committee. At the same time Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said during a visit to her mother’s constituency that the Congress had “lost touch” with people. “We don’t try to know what the people expect from us. Now is the time for us to mix with the masses and struggle for them”. A sound advice this to those who play their politics only in the luxurious bungalows of Lutyens’ Delhi.