Return to democracy only way to go for Congress

The reference in the meeting of the Rajya Sabha members of the Congress about the performance of the two editions of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre seems to have further exposed the fault line within the party. While a section is blaming the governments for the party’s fate, another is staunchly defending it. It is, however, a welcome development that leaders of the India’s grand old party have thought it fit to ruminate on what went wrong in the past. What defies logic is that the new critics bring to the discussion table not what is happening now or what has happened in the immediate past; they focus on the distant past. They hardly realise that India went to the polling booths twice to elect a Lok Sabha in the period; India under the National Democratic Alliance government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has covered a lot of distance during the period.

The Congress is faced with one too many hard facts. The party has not been with a president for almost a year, the period in which momentous decisions were taken by the ruling dispensation which changed the course of this nation. The Congress watched in silence when a government with no majority in the Rajya Sabha hollowed out Article 370 and passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill; these two moves severely undermined the idea of an inclusive India that the Congress has always stood for. Its voice has not been emphatic even as the nation has been teetering on the brink of an economic ruin and when the government’s response to the pandemic Covid-19 has been disastrous. The way the party ran its campaign for the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana, as well as the developments in Madhya Pradesh where it lost its government, could force people to think that Congressmen have lost the appetite for power; the casual way it approaches threats to its government in Rajasthan could reinforce such a feeling.

If the Congress wants to assert its position in national politics, then it must do its job as the principal Opposition party and expose the chinks in the government’s armour. Internal bickering and blame game will not strengthen the party to do the job but initiating the process of democracy will. The party has not been able to conduct organisational elections doing justice to the idea for long; the last one occurred when P.V. Narasimha Rao was elected president at the Tirupati session of the All-India Congress Committee way back in 1992. A return to the democratic process within the party could throw up leaders with grassroots support who can organise people’s resistance to the government’s attempts to smother the voices of dissent, undermine institutions of democracy and divert attention from real life issues by playing up religious and emotional topics. The Congress must also address the real issues it is facing; it cannot defeat the BJP in the diversionary tactics. The new rebels and their supporters will do well to realise that.