The Congress must act, now
The poll defeat and the success of defectors can lead to further erosion of the party’s base
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) met on Monday to discuss the defeat in the assembly elections, with party president Sonia Gandhi saying that if the party did not “face up to reality”, it would not draw the right lessons. Here is the reality. The Congress got decimated in Bengal, failed to capture power in Kerala and Assam, lost power in Puducherry before the polls and failed to regain it, and is a junior partner in the ruling coalition in Tamil Nadu. To add insult to injury, high-profile defectors who switched ranks have found leadership opportunities in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — with Himanta Biswa Sarma (who left the Congress in 2015) now becoming the third former Congress leader (after N Biren Singh in Manipur and Pema Khandu in Arunachal Pradesh) to take over as a BJP chief minister.
The setback also comes at a time when the question of leadership remains unresolved. Sonia Gandhi is interim president but wants to give way to Rahul Gandhi. He doesn’t want to be president but is, for all effective purposes, in-charge. A group of dissenters forced the party to commit to a timeline for organisational elections — but while slated for this summer, it has now been deferred due to the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. And in any case, the dissenters lack a leader with the stature to openly, successfully, challenge the leadership of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Through all of this, the Congress appears to sense an opportunity in the Centre’s mixed record in managing Covid-19. The fact that Rahul Gandhi gave obvious, but sensible, suggestions on the course of the disease, and that party organisations such as the Indian Youth Congress have done a stellar job in providing relief to citizens, gives the party hope that it can shape some of the political narrative around the pandemic. But in the absence of a clear leadership — the key question is not who becomes party president but who becomes the face to take on Narendra Modi in what will once again be a presidential-style contest in 2024 — the party’s ability to rise is doubtful. Supplement this with its weak organisation, the shift in incentives for leaders and workers who can sense political opportunities elsewhere, and the erosion in states where the party’s base was strong, and the nature of the crisis in the Congress becomes clearer. With noise about a possible non-BJP, non-Congress grouping rising, India’s grand old party is once again in a familiar place — the crossroads. Mrs Gandhi’s admission must be followed by action.