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Blaming factionalism for the
Congress's recent electoral setbacks, as Sonia Gandhi has done,
can be regarded as a somewhat facile explanation, considering that
internal rifts have been a part of the party's genes dating back a
century to the clashes between Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal
Krishna Gokhale, between Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose
and between Indira Gandhi and the so-called "syndicate",
represented by the old guard in the Congress at that time.
Besides these confrontations between the heavyweights at the
national level, there were innumerable relatively minor tiffs
lower down the scale as between A.K. Antony and K. Karunakaran in
Kerala.
But it is necessary to remember that none of these seriously
undermined the Congress. On the contrary, it became an
overpowering political presence at the time of independence and
for at least two decades afterwards, and also in the 1970s and
1980s. There were two reasons for this remarkable achievement. One
was the presence of charismatic leaders at the top, whose popular
appeal swept away the cobwebs of groupism, and the other was the
articulation of the Big Idea, which represented the party's
vision.
Arguably, it is the absence of these two factors which has led to
the party's present plight and, consequently, allowed the petty
groupies to proliferate. It cannot be gainsaid that unless the
Congress finds a sense of direction in terms of an idealistic
outlook, it will continue to flounder.
However, the Congress' travails are all the more surprising
because it is the only party which has been able to reorient its
policies in sync with the changing times. Neither the Left nor the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its two main opponents, has been
able to do so. The comrades, for instance, remain stuck in the
days of Soviet hegemony when anti-Americanism was the flavour of
the day. They seem to take no cognisance of the fact of
communism's terminal decline.
The BJP, on its part, is unable to break free of its pro-Hindu
Jana Sangh past or of its servile relationship with the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the head of the Hindu supremacist saffron
brotherhood. As a result, it is virtually an untrustworthy alien
entity so far as the country's minorities are concerned - Muslims
and Christians - and also for the liberal-minded Hindus.
In contrast, the Congress has undertaken major ideological
changes. For a start, it is gingerly sidestepping the Nehruvian
concept of socialism even if this Fabian ideal is associated with
one of the party's greatest leaders. Along with socialism, another
Nehruvian policy initiative of the 1950s - non-alignment - has
been discarded. In their place, the Congress has chosen
market-driven economic policies and tilted towards America, the
socialists' bugbear.
It isn't that there hasn't been resistance from within the party
to these changes. There are sizeable sections which still hanker
for a "socialistic pattern of society", which the Congress's 1955
resolution envisaged. These groups are also wary of too close a
relationship with America, for which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
is held responsible. Even then, consensus is gradually emerging
that there can be no definitive turning away from economic reforms
or from a close friendship with America.
However, it is the continuing half-heartedness about these
initiatives which is responsible for the Congress giving the
impression of being unsure about its future course of action or
being able to convince the people of whatever it has achieved. It
is the sense of being stuck in a limbo, as it were, which is
hurting the party. Nothing showed the effect of this
purposelessness than the recent Delhi municipal election results
where the BJP succeeded in retaining its hold despite the
achievements of the city's Congress government in making the
national capital one of the country's most liveable cities.
Yet, although the Congress raised its tally of seats from 67 in
2007 to 78 this time, the electorate was unwilling to repose full
faith in it apparently because of its perceived governance deficit
at the centre and entanglement in numerous scams that have been
played up in the media. It was the same in Uttar Pradesh where the
Congress gained the most in terms of a rise in vote share - 14.02
percent in 2012 compared to 8.63 percent in 2007 - a 5.5 percent
jump compared to a 4.5 percent increase for the Samajwadi Party.
The impressiveness of the gain can be seen from the fact that the
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) lost 4.2 percent of its vote share and
the BJP lost two percent. But the Congress still remains very much
a marginal player.
The surge in the Congress' popularity in 2009, which took the
party's Lok Sabha seats to above 200, was the result of the belief
that the party was about to implement the Big Idea of economic
reforms. Instead, not only is the party dithering, it is even
turning to state paternalism redolent of a controlled economy by
favouring dole-oriented programmes like the rural employment
scheme and the proposed hugely expensive food security bill, which
will make a mockery of fiscal discipline. These are ideas which
will not impress the new generation.
Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be
reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com
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