Why Congress Needs Something Beyond Prez Polls, State Polls And A Padyatra

Perhaps nothing epitomizes the vacuity of the Indian National Congress than this instance about the ongoing presidential elections. When the Gandhi family chose Ashok Gehlot as their presidential candidate, the three-term Rajasthan chief minister was asked to step down on the grounds that one person cannot hold two posts. The condition, which was imposed on him long before he could even file the nomination, was never bandied about as an iron rule for the next candidate of the family, Mallikarjun Kharge, who also holds the post of the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

To know what transformation the new president can bring to the party, turn a few pages of history. Immediately after the devastating defeats in the November-December 2013 assembly elec­tions in four states—Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh—Rahul Gandhi famously declared that he was going to “reform the party in ways you cannot even imagine”. The 2014 Lok Sabha polls were just months away, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had already declared Narendra Modi its prime ministerial candidate. Nearly a decade later, one has yet to witness the reforms Gandhi had promised, with the party being regularly rocked by rebellions and exits.

Nevertheless, the Congress has been witnessing arguably the two most defining developments of the Gandhis’ rule over the last decades. For the first time in nearly 25 years, the Congress will have a president other than from its first family. Second, Rahul Gandhi is on an ambitious 150-day padyatra, covering the country on foot from the south to the north, meeting people and rejuvenating the party on the ground.

However, the twin developments suggest that the Gandhis are far from loosening their grip over the party . As the party recently found itself in a major crisis in Rajasthan, the high command and a range of other senior leaders were caught napping. They could not be faulted, as the entire Congress machinery remains focused on the padyatra, with senior leaders ensuring their attendance and walking a few miles with Rahul Gandhi by turns. Similarly, Gehlot, who until the other day was a strong contender for the presidential post, has been pushed aside in favour of another loyalist Kharge, a development that belies the repeated claims of Rahul Gandhis that they would not favour any candidate.

In fact, most of the G-23 leaders who had spoken against the Gandhis and argued for reforms in the party signed nomination papers of Kharge. Days after his camp led a rebellion against the high command, Gehlot came to bat for Kharge by stating that while the other contender Shashi Tharoor comes “from elite class”, Kharge has the “the kind of experience which is needed to strengthen the party”. “Therefore, it will naturally be a one-sided contest for Kharge,” he said.

It has pushed Tharoor, who stated that Kharge represents “status quo and business as usual”, almost out of the race.

That is not all. In a move that further questions the capacity of the party to work independent of the Gandhis, the Congress last week appointed Brijlal Khabri, a former BSP leader, as the president of its Uttar Pradesh unit. Besides, the party also appointed six zonal presidents in the state. The post of the state president had been lying vacant after Ajay Kumar Lallu resigned following the party’s debacle in the assembly polls this year. While the appointment of the Dalit leader Khabri can be seen as an attempt by the party to return to its traditional vote bank, one wonders about the hurried manner in which the president of the biggest state was appointed, when the organisational elections are on. The appointments could have been made after the new president takes over, allowing him space to choose and build his team.

“Why did the party show such hurry in Uttar Pradesh? I do not think there was any need to rush these appointments. The party should have let the new party chief make these appointments,” says Ashutosh Sharma, political analyst and former Information Commissioner of Rajasthan, adding that it “would have corroborated the claims of the Gandhis that the democratic machinery is intact within the party and that the new chief will exercise his power and call some shots”.

With the first family continuing to micro-manage the organisational affairs, where is the space for reforms in the party?

That said, the presidential elections are significant for several reasons. Indian political parties either do not hold elections for top posts and, if they do, they are rarely open to the constant media coverage and scrutiny as the Congress has been subjected to. As the drama over the Congress elections unfolds with daily twists and turns, the BJP that boasts of several presidents over the last two decades has quietly chosen the sitting president J.P. Nadda for another term. In contrast, the Congress exercise sends out a clear message that the party is still more transparent than its counterparts. A source close to Rahul Gandhi tells Outlook that the Congress is trying to align itself on the lines of the BJP’s organisational structure, where the president does not call all the shots. Powers of the president, says the soruce, would somewhat be decentralised, with a Gandhi scion being appointed as one of the vice-presidents. “It is likely that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will be given the post,” he says.

Second, though Kharge is the chosen candidate of 10 Janpath, one can still hope that the presidential post may offer him and the CWC a far greater independence to operate than it has now.

Several party leaders also believe that Kharge’s nomination marks a major change in the party’s power dynamics. His nomination was supported by several dissident G23 members like Mukul Wasnik, Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Hooda and Prithviraj Chavan, implying the dissolution of the long-held internal crisis within the party. Tharoor’s candidature and his open remarks against Kharge and the forces he represents also suggest that the leadership is willing to accommodate dissent. Kharge’s candidature would also allow the Congress to woo Dalits, who have increasingly deserted the party in the last several elections.

In this regard, the telling remark by All India Congress Committee (AICC) Secretary Christopher Tilak holds significance. “Even if he loses in the presidential polls, Tharoor should be given an important post in the party, for instance, that of a vice-president,” he says. Tilak goes on to add that it would offer “him an opportunity and space where he can exercise the ideas he comes with, work hard and carve out a space for himself in the party”. He finally say, “Moreover, it will also make Tharoor a fresh option for the next presidential elections after Kharge completes his term, as he is very old.”

The significance of the presidential elec­tions, then, can be gauged only after a few years. Political analyst Manindra Thakur, who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, also believes that while “the presidential elections will not make a big difference right now, and not give the immediate benefits to the Congress, it will have an impact in the longer run”.

Amid this, the Bharat Jodo Yatra has entered Karnataka, Kharge’s home state, where it is expected to pass through eight districts covering over 500 km. Karnataka is the only state along the padyatra’s route, which goes to elections in the coming months.

On October 2, amid heavy downpour in Mysore, Rahul Gandhi delivered his speech, while the party workers and the public listened to him in rapt attention. The image of Gandhi delivering a speech under torrential rains stormed social media. Thakur believes that through this padyatra, Rahul has been able to challenge popular perceptions about him and rejuvenate party cadres. While the padyatra gained some traction in Kerala and has made an impressive start in Karnataka, the real challenge lies in the north where most of the states are under a strong BJP rule.

But the padyatra alone cannot fix the game for the party. “Even if the yatra gets a good response in the northern states, it needs a strong organisational structure in the Congress to convert the people’s goodwill into electoral dividend,” a senior leader succinctly explains.

“That’s where we are lacking. We need to gear up and strengthen the party organisation quickly,” he says, adding, “maybe, the presidential election fixes it for the party.” In other words, the padyatra may not yield any result if the party is unable to revamp its structure in states. A prime case is the fact that both the presidential elections and the padyatra coincide with the upcoming elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. Since Rahul Gandhi is not even touching the two states, with the party’s focus incessantly on either of the two developments, the net result is that the Congress is yet to gain the momentum for the assembly polls. AICC in-charge for Himachal Pradesh Rajeev Shukla has not visited the state in a while, as the party seems rudderless following the demise of Virbhadra Singh, a Congress stalwart. Since Himachal has had a tradition for changing the government by turns, the party should be fancying its chances against the ruling BJP. However, its campaign is yet to take off. A central observer of the Congress, sipping coffee at a restaurant on Shimla’s Mall Road, says, “Himachal has a strong chance of bringing the Congress to power, but the party is yet to gear up for the election mode.”

On the contrary, Prime Minister Modi has visited the state several times this year. He inaugurated the Bilaspur AIIMS that has been built at the cost of Rs 1,471 crore and the Government Hydro-Engineering College on October 5. He also laid the foundation of two more projects and participated in the famous Dussehra celebrations at Kullu. The BJP’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad held its national convention in Shimla in May, and the party seems to be in an overdrive to engineer defections in the Congress’s ranks.

The situation is not dissimilar in Gujarat, where Aam Aadmi Party has been making swift inroads into the Congress’s vote bank. The party does not need merely a new president. It needs a new political vision, a new set of power equations, a belief that it can revive itself and flourish without the Gandhis. The party has to go beyond its two current chief ministers, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel, both powerful regional chieftains, who have built a strong bastion without invoking the Gandhis’ goodwill or charisma. The Grand Old Party did not win the elections in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in the name of the Gandhis but on the basis of the hard work by local leaders. The new president could not be ignorant about these bare facts.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Prez Polls, State Polls and a Padyatra")

Peerzada Muzamil in Delhi and Ashutosh Bhardwaj in Shimla