The root cause of the Congress' decline is its failure to come to terms with India's progressive federalism.
LK. Advanis invitation to the Congress to join the mahajot, the Grand Alliance against the cpi(m) in West Bengal, is anything but innocent. To do so would make a mockery of everything the Congress claims it stands for. But not to do so would spell its end in the state. By endorsing Mamata Banerjees invitation to the Congress, Advani has sharpened the horns of the dilemma on which it is caught, in the expectation that this will hasten its demise.
Advanis move reflects all the astuteness for which he is justifiably famous. Cross-voting took place last month not just in West Bengal but across the country and reflects a deeper malaise within the Congress. Over the last four months, the Goa unit of the party has defected virtually en masse; prominent figures like Meira Kumar have left the party and some of Sonia Gandhis closest former advisors, like former party spokesman Kapil Sibal, have spoken out against the policies being pursued. Today, its clear to the most wide-eyed neophyte that the Congress ship is sinking.
Since Sonia is the party head, its no surprise that there is a groundswell of criticism of her leadership. Her victory last October from constituencies in both UP and Karnataka may have laid the ghost of her foreign origin to rest. But the belief is gaining ground that she simply doesnt have the understanding of the political system and the man-management skills needed to run a party in the dog-eat-dog world of Indian politics. But pinning the blame on one individual is a form of escapism. There are structural causes for the Congress decline whose origins go back more than three decades to 1967. All one can reasonably blame Sonia for is that she has either not understood them or not found a solution for them.
The root cause of the Congress decline is its failure to come to terms with the progressive federalisation of the Indian polity. This required a corresponding loosening and federalisation of the structure of the party. Unfortunately, ever since Indira Gandhis days, the party has been moving in the opposite direction - towards a greater and greater rigidity of structure and an increasing centralisation of power within it. Paradoxically, the Congress was most federal, in the sense of having powerful state leaders and many centres of power within it, when Indian democracy was federal only in name. Indian federalism really took birth only in 1967 when the opposition for the first time captured six major states. But it was precisely then, under the fear of losing control of the country, that Indira Gandhi began to increase her control of the party. The years from 1969 to 1978 saw two splits in the Congress, which completely destroyed the organisational structure of the party and turned it into a reflection of Mrs Gandhis image. But these were the very years during which powerful state parties based explicitly on ethno-national sentiment were born.
But Congress dominance got prolonged, in part because of the waves of sympathy unleashed by two assassinations. So, when the era of Congress dominance finally came to an end in 1996, the party had no strategy to face the new epoch of multi-party, coalitional democracy that lay ahead.
Everyone in the party knew that it faced two choices: either to try and recapture power on its own or to enter into coalitions to cobble together a majority. But having never seriously discussed strategy after the loss of dominance, the party dithered indecisively between the two choices. The indecision first manifested itself in 1991 when Rajiv Gandhi overrode N.D. Tiwari and the UP Congress and tried for an alliance with Mulayam Singh Yadav. Narasimha Rao made the same mistake in 1995-96. As a result, the UP Congress split and the state unit of the party was effectively destroyed.
Sonia learned the right lessons from these debacles and at the aicc meeting in Pachmarhi in 1998, vowed to go it alone, rebuild the party and wait till the electorate became disenchanted with the bjp. This paid immediate dividends in the state elections in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in December 1998 but that made Congress leaders impatient for power. As a result, Sonia went back on the policy of going it alone and began to support the rjd of Laloo Yadav. This killed the possibility of revival of the party in not only Bihar but also UP.
Today, the party is once again facing the dilemma it faced in 1991 and 1996. Coalitions at the national level will kill many of its remaining units in the states and are therefore self-defeating. Yet each flirtation with this temptingly easy way of returning to power makes it more and more difficult to return to the policy of going it alone.
There is, however, a way out of this vicious conundrum. This is to allow the state unit of the party to decide for itself whether it will go it alone or enter into local coalitions, while the party goes it alone at the national level. Were the Congress to do this, it would open the way for reunification with most if not all the splinter groups that have broken away since 1996. More immediately, it would make possible an alliance between it and the Trinamul Congress in West Bengal.
The Congress that would emerge from this would be a party in which the state units would have a great deal of autonomy. The role of the central leadership would not be to decide who gets a ticket even for parliamentary elections from each state but simply to lay down policy parameters and initiatives that the state units will be expected to follow, whether in or out of power, whether ruling alone or a part of a coalition. It does not take much reflection to see that this kind of party will emphasise issues and look actively for ways of improving governance. Power will become a means to an end and not be an end in itself. But for all this to happen, Sonia Gandhi must first learn to relax her hold on the reigns.