Congress grassroots leaders continue to face challenges in accessing and communicating with senior leaders based in Delhi. This is leading to frustration and disillusionment among party workers due to the centralization of decision-making, difficulty in securing appointments with senior leaders, and the perceived disregard for ground-level feedback.
Last week , a district president level Congress leader came to Delhi to meet the central functionaries to make the case for a senior leader of Jharkhand, who he believed was the best candidate for one of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
The said party leader stayed in Delhi for four days, calling old friends and acquaintances seeking their help in getting an appointment with any of the top leaders of the Congress, without any success.
After much struggle and hours of sitting on the chairs in the Congress office at Akbar road, he and his couple of supporters were able to catch one of a general secretary level leader as he was coming out of his office and moving towards his car and the leader from Jharkhand ran towards him to explain him why the Congress should give the ticket to his preferred leader.
The meeting lasted less than two minutes and it ended with the general secretary dismissing the young leader with a wave of hand, “Dekhte Hain” ( I will see ).
The dejected leader, who is member of the All India Professionals’ Congress and has been a member of the Congress for more than 10 years , returned back to Jharkhand, with nothing achieved except a less than two minutes monologue with a senior leader.
“Sunwai he nahee hai, dhakke khatey rahieye bas, itne bade bade neta hai par koi do minute beth ke sun ne wala bhee nahee hai (There is no hearing, we just are asked to go from one office to the other. There are so many ‘big’ leaders, but they don’t want to listen to party workers for even two minutes,”, he lamented while sharing his experience with the Daily Guardian.
According to him, the leader for whom he had come to Delhi, had himself spent a few days in Delhi with the hope to get an audience with the decision makers in the Congress.
However, he too could not meet anyone. The said leader in question is a five times MLA and one time Lok Sabha member.
Now the young leader has made up his mind to leave politics as he does not want to be associated with the Congress any more.
Getting the audience of senior leaders for Congress party workers and leaders, who travel to Delhi from across all parts of India, has always been a perennial issue. The regional party representatives say that due to the lack of decentralization, all important decision are handled at Delhi or by a few leaders whose only credential is that they are close to the Congress leadership and enjoy its patronage and hence it does not matter for them even if they do not regularly meet the local and regional leaders.
As a result, these state leaders and functionaries are forced to look towards non-political entities including beat journalists for assistance.
One more district level Congress functionary described the outlook of a general secretary as he was a prince of a royal family while the rest of the regional and local Congress functionaries were commoners who were dependent on his handouts. “Last month We had gone to meet him to give him the feedback about the seats, caste arithmetic, possible candidates, their weak and strong points, all which would have helped the party in deciding the best candidates. However, his disdain for us was clearly visible, for him neither us nor our feedback was of any value,” he recalled.
As a result of this culture, the ground feedback, the sentiments of the workers who play a crucial role on the ground, is not registered with the Delhi based top leaders who are dependent on what they are told by ‘senior’ leaders who, mostly, convey a subjective analysis not an objective one.
Party workers in state capitals and district headquarters were expecting this culture to change after the Congress’s debacle in the 2019 polls. However, the feedback from these cities indicate that barring few individuals who are in charge of states or in the role of state presidents, the rest have continued with the tradition of erecting a deep gorge and tall wall between them and the Congress workers.