VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
On February 6, media persons got
an e-mail from the office of Rahul Gandhi that the Congress Vice President
would cast his vote at 10 AM at Booth
No. 88, NP Co-Ed Sr. Secondary School, Aurangzeb Lane ,
in New Delhi for the Delhi Assembly
polls. The idea of the message was simple. Media persons should click him going
to the polling booth and show his visuals on news channels and be present at
the given time.
I was not present in the polling
booth at Aurangzeb Lane in New
Delhi but watched the news channels. He did not speak
to the media as expected even though those whose mail IDs are with his office
had got an invite to be present. Even Congress President Sonia Gandhi spoke a
sentence that whoever the people vote would get elected. Her daughter Priyanka
Vadra too spoke about the party briefly and also posed for photographs with a
lady constable. The one person who seemed indifferent to what was happening
around him was Rahul Gandhi, the heir apparent of the 130-year old party or
rather the person calling the shots for a while now. He got down his vehicle,
walked in a hurry and headed straight for the polling booth without bothering
about those whom his office had invited a day before.
The message was not lost. You
simply do not even have a well-articulated sentence, something so important in
this era when a part of election is fought in media. What was the need of
sending that e-mail invite if you only wanted to be clicked by the
photographers and shown as visuals on TV? In any case, media would have been
present there and would have taken a call whom to click and whose visuals to
show depending on its news value.
This indecision and refusal to
accept new and changing realities explains the plight of the Congress at this
juncture. The exit polls in Delhi
showed that the party which once ruled the Capital for 15 years has now become
a history. The way Rahul Gandhi and others in the party are moving will surely
help it make to the history books faster rather than an electoral force to
reckon with. Gandhi not only looked indifferent to the Delhi
polls but also seemed like going through the motions of campaigning. He seems
to be clueless as to what is happening around him and in the party and how to
tackle it. He has simply allowed the party to drift and at this rate, soon it
will hit the point of no return.
The Delhi
polls are as much a story on the rise and rise of the Aam Aadmi Party as the
decline of the Congress. No one knows where this decline is headed. To the
bottom, some say. It has now become a party of leaders as all the cadres have
deserted and the entire support base shifted towards AAP, which is 128 years
younger than Congress.
Recent political history suggests
that wherever Congress has been reduced to the third spot in polls, the party
is finished forever. This trend started in Tamil Nadu decades ago and the party
is yet to revive itself. In Delhi
they are now reduced to the third spot, a political guarantee that the party
would never be able to revive itself anytime soon. In Haryana, it got into the
third spot barely four months ago behind BJP and Indian National Lok Dal and
seems to be limping in that state in Delhi ’s
neighborhood. In states like Uttar Pradesh, Congress is comfortable being
fourth and in Bihar no one knows where it stands.
So the signs are clear. If the
Narendra Modi wave is subsiding, the default beneficiary is not Congress but a
third political party. Congress does not have the wherewithal and
infrastructure to prevent the slide from a point of no return. Congress style
of politics has simply gone out of currency and the party has refused to accept
it. There was a theory in the party that after the Modi Tsunami ends and
“normalcy” returns to electoral politics, Congress would be the default party
of choice for the people. This is the theory which exit polls in Delhi
have rejected completely.
As elections are the lifeline of
political parties and the indicator where they stand vis-a-vis their rivals, a
situation has arisen where the Congress leaders now fear polls. Somebody told
me an analogy. For Congress, elections are like examinations where the poor
student knows it has to sit for three hours and watch others writing but does
not know the answer of any question.
The next electoral battle would
now be fought in Bihar where it could be held as early
as April given the fluid electoral situation after chief minister Jeetan Ram
Manjhi revolted against his benefactor Nitish Kumar. Here Congress is expected
to join in the alliance of Janata Dal United and RJD and would get a
humiliating number of seats—may be a dozen odd seats out of 243 to contest. For
how long will the party continue with the façade that for the sake of secular
unity and to defeat communal forces, it will accept humiliation with closed
eye?
The most important aspect for the
party should be to shed its baggage of the past. This included advocating
poverty to the point where it alienates even the intended beneficiaries. The
economic policies which talks about subsidies and freebies and not about a
vision for the youth and future too should be shunned. Most importantly, it
cannot remain a private limited company in the grip of a dynasty forever. The
talent in the party has to feel that it can one day reach the top. At present, they know that at best they can
be Ministers of State or PCC President of
state so that they can never be a challenge to the mediocrity which
Rahul Gandhi represents.
If Congress does not reinvent
itself, and there are no signs of it, sooner or later, even the leaders would
desert the party. Workers and cadres deserted it over the months and years
while the leaders waited and are waiting. But for how long? The Gandhi family
is no longer glue which can hold the party forever and guarantee electoral
success. Rather it is becoming a burden for a large number of sincere Congress
workers glued to its ideology of secularism and an umbrella like formation
under which divergent views, ideology, castes and communities thrive.
Now, it was time to take stock of
things, tighten the seat belt and look forward. But for that to happen, the
Gandhi family, particularly Rahul Gandhi, has to take the lead and go for an
overhaul which includes a diminished role for himself and end of personality
cult in the party. Is he ready for that? Only time will tell. (February 9, 2015 )
