SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Kanchan Gupta

The death of the Congress is imminent

The past fortnight has proved to be a harrowing time for Congress president Sitaram Kesri. Ever since nearly all the MLAs walked out of the party in Uttar Pradesh and joined hands with the BJP, Kesri has been spending sleepless nights wondering whether he can keep his flock together in other states and, most important, at the Centre.

It is this concern which was betrayed in the patently absurd suggestion that the anti-defection law, as it exists today in the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, should be amended to raise the number of legislators required for splitting a legislative party from the present 33 per cent to 50 per cent. The suggestion stems from Kesri's apprehension that a third of Congress MPs have already packed their bags and are waiting to board the BJP gravy train.

It is anybody's guess how far this is true. But the very fact that Kesri believes it shows he lacks the courage that is required of a party leader, more so a party president, to weather a storm. Blaming the RSS, Congress spokesman V N Gadgil called it a "Rumour Spreading Society," charging it with launching a whisper campaign that the Congress is on the verge of a split -- This is hardly the response that is expected of the Congress president. In his place, Indira Gandhi would have dared her rivals to split the Congress and scared the daylight out of potential defectors.

The Uttar Pradesh episode has led to two developments: First, it has left the Congress leadership shaken and rattled; and, second, the BJP has followed up its political victory with a sustained psychological war against the Congress leadership, a war in which it is the clear winner. Both the developments provide evidence of the pathetic quality of the clique led by Kesri that has grabbed control over the Congress.

Indeed, Kesri has proved what has been said all along about him: He is not fit to lead the Congress which till recently straddled the national political scene like a colossus. He does not have the political acumen to turn defeat into advantage. He lacks the charisma of a leader who can energise a defeated army on the battlefield and launch a counterattack. He has miserably failed in selecting the right men for the job of running the party, ignoring those who still maintain live contact with whatever remains of the Congress at the grassroots level.

Today, Congress workers are a directionless, depressed and dejected lot. They do not know which way the party is gong and what is the thinking of the party leadership. The view from the states is diametrically opposite to the view from Delhi: What Kesri thinks should be done is different from what the state leaders think must be done if the Congress has to be saved from total annihilation. For all purposes, the Congress today is out of sync with popular aspirations and bereft of ideas to mobilise the masses.

Starting from the day when the Congress was floated by a group of elite Indians, it has been an organisation driven by ideas and purposes. Strictly speaking, it never had an ideology to hold together individuals. But the absence of ideology was overcome by floating ideas that struck a chord with the masses, ideas from which originated strong mass movements. For instance, Lokmanya Tilak floated the concept of a sarvajan Ganesh festival. The festival in turn was used as a means of mobilising the masses and drawing them into the freedom movement.

Similarly, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi floated the idea of civil disobedience as a means of collective protest. For the first time the high and the low, the farmer and the student, the lawyer and the trader, were all drawn into the mass struggle for freedom. The historic Dandi March was conceived around the idea of repudiating an exploitative law. Similarly, Gandhi's concept of non-violence was built around the idea of seizing the moral high ground. What made Gandhi's ideas especially appealing to the masses was their ethical base.

In a sense, the Congress success in India's struggle for freedom was primarily due to its leadership's ability to gauge the popular mood and come up with ideas that could capture the popular imagination. This tradition continued after Independence, too. When Jawaharlal Nehru referred to dams, factories and bridges as the 'temples of modern India,' he was echoing the popular urge for rapid development. When Indira Gandhi abolished princely purses and nationalised banks, she was pandering to popular sentiments. The Congress, after all, has the unique distinction of winning an entire election on the slogan of 'Garibi Hatao!'

Historically, the Congress has succeeded politically whenever it has been able to strike the right popular chord. And for this, the party, more precisely the Congress leadership, had to be in live contact with the masses. On the other hand, every time the Congress leadership lost touch with the ground reality and failed to gauge the popular mood, the party suffered reverses.

Indira Gandhi believed she had demolished the Opposition during the Emergency and that the people were happy with her Emergency policies and programmes. Instead of going out to the people and finding out the reality herself, she relied on Sanjay Gandhi and his coterie who had absolutely no clue about the seething anger waiting to erupt. As a result, the Congress was defeated in 1977. A true leader and an astute politician, she rallied round her forces and launched an energetic offensive. Her famous elephant ride to Belchi is a classic example of how the popular imagination of the masses can be captured through the effective implementation of an idea.

Rajiv Gandhi, who won a massive, landslide victory, squandered it away because he thought he could run a party and win elections with the help of computers. The simple fact that computers are essentially lifeless machines that can process data, but cannot give you a feel of the pulse of the people, eluded him. By allowing himself to become captive in the hands of a chosen few, he led the party to its defeat in 1989.

The Congress did come back to power in 1991, but as a poor shadow of its past. P V Narasimha Rao did little to revitalise the party; on the contrary, the economic policies of his government, which were praised by the World Bank and the IMF, distanced the party from the masses. Rampant corruption further reduced the party's popular appeal, bringing it to its present state of health.

By refusing to listen to the voices of common party workers, Sitaram Kesri is compounding this mistake. He has successfully cut off the party from popular sentiments and made it into a dead institution which has no imaginative plans or programmes for the future. The so-called 'blueprint' for the revival of the Congress has no doubt kept Kesri's second-raters busy at the AICC office on Akbar Road, but it has failed to galvanise party workers, such as the Congress can boast of today, in small villages and kasbas.

Anybody who can take a dispassionate view of Congress affairs will vouch that not a single programme has been thought of by Kesri and his team that can enthuse party workers and attract the attention of the masses. Making the singing of the Ramdhun mandatory at party meetings is hardly the stuff around which a powerful movement can be built to resuscitate the Congress.

Instead, what we are witnessing is a confused party cadre led by a weak party president whose response to crisis situations correspond to that of a drowning man and not of a general leading an army. For instance, convinced that his MPs are going to walk out on him, Kesri thought he could hold them back by promising them power. Hence his offer to join the United Front government, knowing full well that the parties in the ruling coalition cannot be seen in their respective states to be collaborating with the Congress and, therefore, were sure to reject his offer. All that Kesri got for his efforts was ridicule.

Now, it appears, he has decided not to rake up the controversial issue of taking action on the basis of the Jain Commission's report, lest it push him into a situation where he will be forced to take hard decisions. This has understandably upset party workers, but by now they should have realised that their leader's feet -- as also his hands -- are made of clay.

Soon after Independence, Gandhi had suggested that the Congress should be disbanded as it had fulfilled its role. Gandhi obviously foresaw the future and was convinced that a time would come when the Congress would become a gathering of small men with tall ambitions. If Gandhi's advice had been taken and the Congress disbanded, then India would have suffered. After all, the Congress was the only national party which could maintain the political unity of India.

But while India has survived, the Congress is on its deathbed. The party is suffering from a terminal disease that has no cure. A doctor looking after a person suffering from cancer cannot predict exactly when will his patient die. Usually, the prediction is that the patient could die in a few hours, a few days or a few months. The only element of certitude is that death is imminent unless a miracle occurs. Similarly, it cannot be predicted whether the Congress will die in a few hours, a few days or a months. But there is no way it can escape death. Unless, of course, Sitaram Kesri can pull off a miracle. If he does that, that itself would be a miracle.

Kanchan Gupta