Congress needs to recover and revive

Congressmen, desperately looking for a young leader to revive their party, expect Rahul Gandhi to be crowned chief at the next AICC session and get involved whole time in politics. Though he took time off to reflect on the future course of the Party, he has already started to assert himself in the selection of organisational chiefs in some states, who are closer to the people and could be trusted to devote themselves whole heartedly to restore it to the position of primacy in democratic politics.

Even though the A.K.Antony Committee, tasked to find the reasons for the party's worst-ever debacle in the last Lok Sabha election, did largely a white-washing job, the reasons for its decline are there for everyone to see. The main factor is a remote and disengaged leadership that has ceased to think and intervene politically or simply to take charge and work hard. The party had lost not just its ideological coherence and political conviction, but its very will to retain power. The result was getting easily pushed aside by other parties that have greater drive, ambition and vigour. It is, therefore, time that Rahul Gandhi and Congress use the break to mull over how to set the wrongs right.

It is clearly visible for all to see that the Congress could not package and sell the record of its solid achievements during 10 years of UPA's rule, but got deflected by the criticism it invited on account of flaws in spectrum and coal blocks allocation, which it could not defend from the criterion of larger public good against just getting some more money into government's coffers. The reforms under taken by the Congress are being continued by the BJP Government, with only minor modifications necessitated by experience. The BJP government has succeeded in getting some of UPA's bill passed by parliament, such as, that on insurance reform which the Congress wholeheartedly supported.

It is now acknowledged by the Modi Government that the country's economy grew by 6.5 per cent during the last year of UPA's rule and the strong basis in place will achieve 7.5 per cent during the current fiscal. After its unprecedented parliamentary defeat last year, the party's morale was shattered and it took months for it to find its feet again and start thinking in terms of emerging as effective opposition. The search for new and young leadership started because of Sonia Gandhi's poor health and her inability to put in much political effort during electioneering. Rahul Gandhi's reluctance to take on the mantle, coupled with the feeling that nothing much could change unless the party was thoroughly overhauled from the village level, up made him feel disinterested in undertaking a seemingly impossible task of giving a new face to the old organisation.

However, it has now dawned on all those who matter that the Congress needs a convincing new narrative to weave its way back to political relevance and also to galvanise a demoralised rank and file. The revival must happen through a more dynamic, bottom-up approach. Mr. Rahul Gandhi talks of organisational reform and elections to party posts and that democratisation cannot be limited to structural changes. More voices must be heard, ideas thrown up at the AICC session must travel up and the party's fate and direction must be decided through debate and dissent and decisions taken to ensure whole-hearted involvement of rank and file in the difficult task ahead.

The Modi Government has been using its overwhelming numbers in the Lok Sabha to relegate the voice of the disunited opposition. The Congress Vice-President was rarely seen to use the parliamentary space and time that he has had over the years as an MP, with effectiveness and responsibility, to articulate public causes. The Party needs to use the parliamentary forum in strategic and constant ways. Through persistent interventions it needs to articulate the people's concerns and force the government to respond and hold it accountable. The party also needs to correct its pre-2014 blunder of not putting up a joint fight against the BJP in the last election which would have yielded an entirely different picture from what emerged actually.

Having lost that opportunity, it needs to forge intelligent and issue based alliances with other parties in the opposition ranks. It is well known that the BJP is in power with just 34 per cent of the popular vote and 66 percent of the population voted against it. The Congress felt so demoralised in the Lok Sabha with just 44 members, that it could not take up popular issues and rely on the strength of the combined opposition to frustrate the BJP, if it pushed through legislation which was not considered in the larger public interest. Any manoeuvres should be genuinely oppositional and not appear merely obstructionist. The Congress seized the opportunity of the BJP "tampering" with its Land Acquisition Bill to forge a united front against it. It has also provided Mrs. Sonia Gandhi opportunity to spearhead the farmer's protest against the new bill with all other opposition parties behind her.

Not being the party of governance, the Congress needs to fully accept its role as the principal opposition more seriously. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi has made it clear repeatedly that time for handing power to Rahul Gandhi is near, though his initial reluctance delayed the decision, despite a clamour in the party that he take up full responsibility of reviving it with an imaginative action-programme. Considering the fact that the BJP has the additional advantage of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh cadre at its disposal, the Congress has to almost rebuild its cadres in states where it lost heavily and where its revival poses problems as it is confronted by regional forces, mainly supported by caste and clan formations. It should confront them where it can and cooperate with them where it leads to accretion of its strength without unnecessary division of votes.

Rahul Gandhi has to make a final determination to plunge headlong into politics and lead the country's oldest political organisation with a nation-wide base still intact. He must lead from the front and select his team, which should be a mix of youth and experience. He is not creating a new organisation but rebuilding an old one, where he will need the advice and active help of experienced hands, who have nursed the party for decades and won election after election at the national or state levels. His team should inspire confidence among all sections of partymen who can be tasked to accomplish a very difficult job since the Modi Government will not leave any stone unturned and use all means at its disposal to malign and weaken them.

It is ironical but true that the party lost the support of Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims to regional Parties. It, therefore, needs to rebuild its base among these groups and the urban poor by agitating for their livelihood rights. The party leaders now realise that its revival hinges on its ability to address its crisis or credibility, encouraging state leaders, and functioning as a vigorous opposition within and outside central and state legislatures.

The BJP's view of the country is fundamentally at variance with the Congress one in myriad ways. As Prof Zoya Hasan points out, these differences are sharp particularly in terms of political and social policies. The threat to the congress form Hindu nationalism was never greater since BJP came to power under Narendra Modi's leadership and his sharp-edged political vision of an India defined and governed by the ethos and parameters of majoritarianism. Any attempt to reshape itself as pale saffron in a desperate bid to mimic the winner will only help to legitimise the dangerous right-wing political discourse, while failing to pick up some of the electoral dividends from this competitive wooing of Hindu vote.

Notably, doing so in the past had disastrously backfired resulting in its fuller political marginalisation in north India, especially Uttar Pradesh. On issues, such as, subordinating the rights of the poor to the rights of the rich and entrepreneur classes in land acquisition etc and the rising communal polarisation in the country provided an opening to the Congress-led opposition to take on the BJP. Protests against the party in power can be used to forge unity within the Congress and rally the opposition behind it.

Those in power would be hasty to write off the Congress and achieve a "Congress Mukt Bharat". It would also be unwise to under-estimate the political challenge facing it at the worst time in its history. It must adopt a platform to rejuvenate it, based on welfare and pluralism.

—[IFS]