Congress needs the courage to change

It’s widely acknowledged that companies, usually family-managed, but sometimes also professionally run, hire consultants to state obvious but unpleasant truths that they themselves cannot, and act on them. The Congress’s dalliance with Prashant Kishor needs to be seen in this context — though there is some merit in asking the question that some are: What’s in it for him?

It is almost universally known that the Congress’s problems lie along four dimensions: Generational (as in some of its most senior leaders are, well, most senior); leadership; organisational and structural; and communicative (the inability to come up with a message that captures the imagination of the voters, and the further inability to widely disseminate this message). The party’s troubles are amplified by the fact that its national rival and current political hegemon, the Bharatiya Janata Party, does well on all four aspects. While it may not take an outsider to solve these problems, it is perhaps easier for one to articulate them, and, if empowered, try to solve them, although, given the internal dynamics of the Congress party it is unlikely that an outsider will find acceptance. Nor, for that matter, will an insider (the Gandhi family excepted).

For the Congress, the recent episode can, at best, be seen as a crash course (not that it needs one) on all that ails it and, at worst, a desperate attempt at course correction. Perhaps the real question the party needs to ask itself is why, despite knowing what is wrong, it repeatedly refuses to do the right thing. It has enough incentive to do so; and resources can always be discovered. It may boil down to that most intangible but also most desirable aspects of leadership: The courage to change.