Congress: Politics and politicking

Amitabh Shukla

New Delhi

Congress has mastered the art of politics and politicking. No wonder, the party has remained in power for over half a century in the country since 1947.

The business of “distancing” from either the statements and policy decisions of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or a party leader is what keeps happening at regular intervals, so much so that it has become a joke in the media fraternity. No one in the party knows who will distance himself from one statement made by the PM, a Cabinet Minister or a party General Secretary.

The so called inner party democracy, seen in the utterances of Digvijay Singh and Keshav Rao on a host of issues, is intended to kill several birds with one stone.

One idea of both Rao and Singh is to pursue a so called “left agenda” in the party. They want to be identified as “left leaning” politicians within the party, taking inspiration from the views which Jawaharlal Nehru, the first real modern political elite, without the baggage of royalty and zamindari, held at one point of time. They have managed rope in Rahul Gandhi in their agenda who talks a similar language. No wonder, Digvijay is said to be the political adviser of the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

What Digvijay Singh wrote in Economic Times on Maoism was a calibrated and well thought of political strategy. He wanted to endear himself to the Maoists and also their sympathizers – tribals. These are the areas from where Congress has been decimated over the years in the political battles.

Keshav Rao, a Rajya Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh and an important party functionary followed suit. He has found the Rajya Sabha as an ideal platform to air his views, knowing fully well that it would be noticed everywhere, he can distribute the verbatim speech to the media as an e-mail attachment and also the party bosses from where he takes the cue and draws power from.

The second idea behind the duo’s verbal indulgence is to play the opposition within the ruling party. They want to have the space of the opposition as well, taking the ideas and then selling it to corner all the space which the opposition might have. Just go back to Sharm-al-sheikh where Manmohan Singh practically threw away the nation’s foreign policy interests. Sensing the mood of the nation, Congress was quick in playing to the gallery and for almost two weeks disassociated with the joint statement of India and Pakistan.

So when the Congress goes campaigning in areas where there is Maoist presence, they can always proclaim see “we talk of changing the lives, bringing development and talk of socio-economic change”.

If they go to urban areas, metropolis and approach the middle-upper class for votes, they will site P Chidambaram’s much-publicised tough policy to get their votes. It is like saying “Heads I win, Tails you lose”. Congress wants to have it in all situations. It is also like the jhola chhap doctor who claims he can cure all ailments.

Another bird which they want to politically kill is obviously the Prime Minister so that he is discredited over a period of time and it is easier for the crown prince to assume charge. After all, you need a pretext to remove somebody and that too from a post as high as that of the Prime Minister.

Sharm-al-Sheikh was the beginning of the end of Manmohan Singh’s second tenure. Perhaps the only independent decision which he took in the lackluster tenure was signing the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. Not surprising to see that after the Nuclear Liability Bill was passed in Parliament, the PM goes to Tirupati to thank the Lords – “Mission accomplished”.

What happened on August 31 in Rajya Sabha when Keshav Rao set the tone for the embarrassment of the government was not only a loss of face for HRD minister Kapil Sibal but also the Prime Minister. The Education Tribunal Bill has the full support of Singh, an academician-turned-politician. The beneficiaries in this Bill would largely have been the US-based universities and colleges like the Nuclear Liability Bill in which the beneficiaries would primarily be the US companies. In a way it was the second Sharm-al-Sheikh for the PM.

So Sibal rushed to the Prime Minister after the Bill was deferred in the Rajya Sabha to draw a future strategy as the author of the debacle Keshav Rao was defended by a section of the government and the party with the likes of Pawan Kumar Bansal and Janardan Dwivedi endorsing what Rao said.

This business of double-speak was in full flow in the “saffron terror” remark of Chidambaram. After trying to create a space for the “Left” in the party, Congress mandarins also want to create a space for the “Right” in their ranks. Janardan Dwivedi, the Brahmin leader, Hindi speech writer of Sonia Gandhi and her one time Hindi tutor, chooses to attack Chidambaram on the issue.

After championing the cause of the Batla House accused, Digvijay Singh joins the bandwagon saying saffron is the colour of valour and has religious connotations. Why don’t you say that you want the votes of Muslims, Hindus and everybody and can go on contradicting yourself time and again for this. You want to reflect all shades of opinion yourself – Left, Right, Centre and even extreme Left.

Congress in the pre-independence era was a sort of umbrella organization for everyone – the casteists, the extreme Leftists, the extreme Rightists, the Centrist and what not. The Raos, Singhs and Dwivedis, Manishankar Aiyars want to recreate it 70-80 years later not realizing that the world has moved on, people read between the lines and the same party (Congress) has led to the extinction of political innocence of the Indian electorate.

(September 2010)