One of the biggest enemies of the Congress party, one which prevents it from rejuvenating and reinvigorating itself and becoming the real voice of the people and lead the Opposition against the BJP was centrestage at the 85th Plenary of the Grand Old Party in Raipur. This is the force which forever chain the party’s present to an arcane past and disallows its wings from even taking off to fly to a potentially bright future. This force is a vestigial organ of the Congress party, the cousin of the dinosaur — the infamous old guard.
Driven by vested interests and its own need to pretend it is important, the Old Guard yet again sabotaged the efforts of its real leader, Rahul Gandhi, in a classic Congress play. Both the spirit and letter of the Udaipur Declaration, made public at a Chintan Shivir last year, were totally killed in a tame, banal statement that it was authorising Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with the power and freedom to name the CWC members instead of going in for elections.
The CWC is the most powerful body of the party, whose most members are, in the popular opinion of its own young leaders and majority of its workers, very old, irrelevant, redundant and practically unelectable — and almost invariably, like US Supreme Court judges, treat the appointment as a post for life. Thus, change becomes impossible in a party whose highest body owes its existence, power and influence to its success in nipping all prospects of change.
The entire theme of one party, one ticket, or representation for youth was missed. A clause on reservations for Dalits, STs, OBCs and minorities was mentioned but it is anyone’s guess that coterie will prevail and a total lack of imagination, and absolutely the highest premium on loyalty to the nominating leader, would prevail.
The second aspect of the Plenary was its total lack of planned and designed socialising, which could have enabled its top leaders to interact with and meet younger leaders and workers from all over the country. Instead, the sharp metallic dividers and sections, in the name of logistics and security, ensured each group was kept in its own barriers, its limits, its status, and the rigidity reminded everyone of how hard social climbing would prove to be for each one of them.
The third was an absence of debate, discussion, a vibrant exchange of ideas, or free expression and empowerment to dissent on key issues. It was a total handiwork of management, with the stage managers, literally, ensuring a script was played out where, whether the party wins in elections or not, they would ensure their own influence in the party stays.
It was the common point of bemoaning of most attendees that nothing changes in the party, despite the defeats, that no lessons are learnt, and that while Rahul Gandhi through his Bharat Jodo yatra, or Sonia Gandhi, through her graceful swan song, may be willing to make all sacrifices, and put in stupendous and heroic efforts, but the party is of, for and by the Old Vested Guard. And it prevailed at Raipur over all else.
