NORTH EAST REJECTION AND RAHUL GANDHI

Yet again the Congress has been outsmarted and outmanoeuvred. It has been pipped to the post of chief ministership in Meghalaya despite its emerging as the single largest party. The story of Manipur and Goa is being repeated all over again. Rushing senior leaders like Ahmad Patel and Kamal Nath to Shillong to ward off just such an eventuality has obviously not paid off. The BJP got but only two seats, but it played a key role in putting together a coalition of the 19-member National Peoples’ Party and a few others for the leader of the NPP, Conrad Sangma, to stake claim to form government. The hastily put-together coalition claims the support of 34 in a 60-member House. With BJP governments in Tripura and Nagaland a near certainty, a BJP-supported coalition in Meghalaya virtually puts paid to the Congress’s bid to retain a toehold in the North-East. Its misery is complete. How the newly-anointed Congress President Rahul Gandhi reacts to the rude rebuff from the farthest corner of the country, where it has held nearly unbroken sway thus far remains to be seen. But the rowdy conduct of the party in the two Houses of Parliament after it opened on Monday following the customary budget session recess indicates that empty belligerence and aggression will only increase in the coming days and weeks. To draw the right lessons from the electoral setbacks is not given to every leader. The Congress leadership is behaving ostrich-like, blaming its complete rout in Tripura to the misuse of money and muscle power by the BJP and the allegedly dubious role of the Election Commission. If the truth be told, the Congress has run out of fresh ideas. And its leadership, uninspiring and venal, lacks the stomach for hard grassroots work. On the other hand, the BJP and its mentor, the RSS, invest a lot of time and energy in laying strong organisational roots where hitherto they have had no presence. The Sangh workers have been working for years in Tripura. On the other hand, the CPI(M), a cadre-based party, has failed to correct its ideological and social philosophy. Whether hardcore ideological purity should come ahead of its oft-stated objective to defeat the RSS-BJP, or it should wallow in its increasing isolation, clinging to its ideological virginity, are questions the Politburo has failed to grapple with conclusively. The Sitaram Yechury-Prakash Karat divide has confused the party cadres. Maybe the loss in Tripura, where the outgoing Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, deservedly enjoyed a sterling reputation for personal integrity and ideological commitment, should be particularly galling. Now, the only State where the party has a coalition government is Kerala, but its performance leaves much to be desired. Failure to adjust with the larger political reality can, indeed, result in the Marxists losing its last stronghold.

While the BJP will feel boosted by the North-East outcome going into the Karnataka Assembly polls, the bigger challenge is for Rahul Gandhi to dispel the growing misgivings about the future of the party. At the coming plenary session of the party in Delhi where he is to be formally installed, he should unveil a new plan, a new vision, a new testament for the party members — and then ensure that they all live up to it. The party is saddled with of a lot of deadwood. The new boss should not hesitate to wield the big surgical knife to get rid of the corrupt, the venal and the controversial. As the only other national party with presence in most parts of the country, the Congress owes it to the country to cleanse itself. If it has a future under the next generation of Gandhis, it is welcome to have him lead it, but, more importantly, if Rahul lacks what it takes to be a leader, the party cadres owe it to themselves to replace him with someone more dynamic, more imaginative, more attuned to the needs of the 21st century India. Clinging to the coattails of the Family can prove mutually suicidal. Remember if Amarinder Singh is the Punjab chief minister, it is because he is a leader in his own right. Indeed, in Karnataka, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is increasingly doing his own thing, with the writ of the central leadership barely running. The rejection of the Congress in North-East sends out a clear message to the new Congress boss. Which is that without empowering regional leaders, there is no future. Meanwhile, the party should turn a new page in its parliamentary tactics. Instead of routinely disrupting proceedings, it should allow the Parliament to function — and thus send out a message to the country that under a new leader, it is a new Congress.