Dynastic democracy

Wednesday’s euphoric displays outside 24, Akbar Road, celebrating Sonia Gandhi’s electoral victory as Congress president, are over and the drum beaters have gone home. Ironically, a mature reading of the election outcome would indicate that there is really no great cause for euphoria within the party, nor is there room for drum beaters either. True, Sonia has now acquired a democratic fig leaf for a position that came her way by the accident of marriage but this development was a foregone conclusion. Party malcontent Jitendra Prasada did not have a ghost of a chance, not because the issues he raised were not relevant but because of his own, largely redundant, profile within a party that has come to regard the Nehru-Gandhi clan as its life support system. Despite whispers that the electoral process was less than fair, there is no denying Sonia the handsome mandate party workers have handed to her. It indicates that their fears of Congress disintegration largely override any disquiet they may feel over thedynastic nature of the party’s polity.

The question is, what does Sonia plan to do with this mandate. How will she interpret the verdict? Will she see it as an opportunity to steamroller opposition within the party, or to allow the party to grow by yielding political space to colleagues? Will the victory make her more dynastic or will it prompt a democratisation of Congress party culture? The best way shecan celebrate her victory is really by asserting herself as the party’s undisputed leader and stepping out of the shadow of a coterie which, even as it seems to kowtow to her, has systematically used her to advance its own interests. It was this lot that was at least partially responsible for the various embarrassments she has had to experience thus far, whether it was the unprincipled removal of Sitaram Kesri from his post as party president in March 1998, or the premature staking of claim to form a government in May 1999. A confident leader should also make a fair assessment of her own strengths and inadequacies and learn to use the talent within the party to build up the organisation. This requires, above all, an ability to delegate responsibility. Paranoia does not allow growth, on the contrary it makes for backroom manoeuvering, backstabbing and the ultimate fragmentation of the party as the Sharad Pawar episode testified to. Sonia can now afford to rise over petty politics and emerge as a unifying,rather than dividing, force.

But will she choose to do this? Very unlikely, going by past precedent. Which will be most unfortunate because if the Congress is not to be rendered totally irrelevant as the largest party in Opposition it had better get its act together and come across as a coherent and cohesive political force. Right now, it blunders on, having fashioned the new economic policy and yet unable to acknowledge it; having the political support of the most marginalised in the country and yet unable to articulate their interests; having the experience of 45 years at the helm and yet unable to reassert itself, politically at the Centre. If it wants to be a party of governance again, it will have to fashion itself as a convincing party of Opposition. Sonia Gandhi has to work towards this. She has no excuses now.