In the recently held assembly elections in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee won a third term with ¾ majority garnering over 47% votes, the Indian Nation Congress, in alliance with the Left Front polled less than 7% votes and failed to open her account. But isn’t it déjà vu? In Feb 2020, for the second time, INC drew a blank in Delhi elections; 63 of its voters lost deposit and its voting share was reduced to a negligible 5%. The President, the Vice President, and dozens of Congress leaders living in Lutyen’s Delhi didn’t see it coming. Let us rewind, in the parliamentary elections in 2019, in UP, its President Rahul Gandhi lost his seat to a total outsider, BJP’s Smriti Irani. Sonia Gandhi won the solitary seat of Raebareli with a reduced majority when both the SP & the BSP hadn’t put up a candidate against her; even this seat isn’t safe in the next election. Though for over 54 years, Congress Prime Ministers were at the helms of affairs, and it had ¾ of states under its rule for decades, in Feb 2021, it is in power in only three states: Punjab, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh and is a minor partner in three ruling alliances: Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Jharkhand. Evidently, the INC is disappearing. But Congress leaders, living in their own ivory towers, cut off from the people on the ground, surviving on the staple diet of sycophancy and flattery are incapable of reading the writing on the wall. They can’t draw sensible lessons as they lack courage and honesty to face the facts; successive defeats don’t embarrass them anymore; they have become shame proof.
After every defeat, they go through the farcical ritual: the nominated Executive Committee filled with coteries and loyalists, most of whom haven’t won a Lok Sabha election in recent years, meet to do introspection/ analysis of the causes of defeat; leadership owns responsibility and offers to resign; chorus rises to a crescendo pleading with the leadership not to resign, after some cajoling, they relent, the loyalist blame everybody other than the leadership for the debacle and conclude that in the prevailing dire circumstances the leadership must stay put and lead. Expecting anything else will be blasphemy. What’s needed is an honest postmortem but what they achieve is some breathing time to hold on to the sinking ship as they have nowhere else to go.
Hats off to Rahul Gandhi; he resigned after the 2019 elections and hasn’t taken it back despite all the appeals. It speaks volumes about the health and direction of 136-year-old Congress party that it hasn’t found a suitable replacement for Rahul Gandhi in a year and a half. His mother, despite her failing health, shoulders on as the interim President trying to keep her flock together and hoping against hopes that voters, disenchanted with the Narendra Modi-led BJP, will eventually catapult the Congress back to power. Amidst the current churning in Indian society and politics, this seems wishful thinking.
While doing their introspection, the Congress leaders don’t ask simple questions:
A- What it has done in the last seven years that voters would have a fresh look at the party as a credible alternative to the BJP?
B- Does it have an achievable vision and a concrete and time-bound action plan to address the numerous problems of India?
C- Does it have the leadership which can inspire its cadre to work tirelessly at the grass-root level in the rough and tumble of Indian politics and compete with the BJP+ RSS cadre?
D- Besides repeating catalogues of the wrongdoings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, does the INC have any counter-narrative to attract the voters?
E- How many weeks its MPs and MLAs spend in their constituencies and get people’s problems resolved which could generate a sense of confidence for the party?
They don’t ask why only 1% upper castes, 1%Jatavs, 0% other SC, 1% Yadavs, and 10% Muslims voted for it in UP in 2019 plummeting its vote share to only 6.3%. Why has Congress’s core supporters deserted it? Is a correction possible without facing facts?
Alas, the INC hasn’t created a generation of ambitious and competitive leaders who have a burning desire to see Congress soar again and have the courage to take the fight to the enemy’s camp. Most of the Congress leaders are tired, retired, and have been bereft of any vision except occasionally issuing statements denouncing Narendra Modi. They can’t fight so holding on to the apron strings of the leadership is an easy option.
Last year, 23 Congress leaders, most of them senior citizens, nicknamed by the media as G-23 dared to write a letter to Sonia Gandhi flagging various issues and suggesting organisational elections including for the post of the President. More than a year has passed but they have achieved nothing. The successful rebellion needs more than well-written letters. G-23 lacks grass-root support, organisational backing, and the spine and courage to challenge the Gandhi Nehru family.
The CWC which met this week has deferred organisational elections on account of Covid-19. Even if they hadn’t, very little was likely to emerge. For any dispassionate observer, the biggest problem which the INC faces today is the leadership crisis. But for the septuagenarian Congress leaders suffering from an advanced stage of Ostrich syndrome, leadership isn’t an issue. So said the former Finance & Home Minister, P. Chidambaram; for him, Rahul Gandhi is the choice of the Congress cadre. In Digvijaya Singh’s homily, only Sonia Gandhi can hold the party together. Thus, in Congress, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Congress will be well-advised not to underestimate its rival. Notwithstanding recent setbacks and huge bad press for inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Narendra Modi remains a formidable opponent; he can’t be unseated just by a barrage of accusations.
Indian voters will vote for you for what you have done for them and what you are likely to do and not for your leader’s high profile lectures at prestigious universities abroad.
Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee have proved that the Modi-Shah duo isn’t invincible. But it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea to become a Mamata Banerjee or Arvind Kejriwal.
The author, a former Ambassador, writes on political and strategic affairs. The views expressed are personal.