Grand old confusion

The Congress may have won Rajasthan, but that does not mean the business of politicking is over and that the business of administration has begun. The Rajasthan Congress legislature party, or CLP, meets today to consider the various possibilities for the state8217;s chief minister; their deliberations will be watched over, carefully, by a team from the All India Congress Committee led by the AICC8217;s general secretary, Digvijay Singh. This is, we are told, how the Congress always does things; why would there be any reason to change?

As the grand old party regularly seems to discover but never seems to internalise, there are always reasons to change. A look at why there8217;s been a delay in Rajasthan might make it clear what these are. Why, indeed, would Sheila Dikshit be confirmed speedily as the leader of the Delhi CLP this time round she was not made to wait a pointless few days, as she was last time while Ashok Gehlot, the front-runner for leader of the Rajasthan CLP and thus for chief minister, is made to wait? Clearly the concern isn8217;t merely ensuring that state leaders know that the Congress8217;s central leadership is in command. No, the biggest reason appears to be that the Congress is postponing picking a CM because it wants to minimise the impact any choice might have on its support in Jat communities across the state, especially given the Lok Sabha polls expected early next year. The Congress, once a strong contender for their votes, believes that it has lost ground in recent years: this time, less than half the Jat candidates put up by the party won. This argument is not really persuasive. To start with, if Jat candidates did not win, there is no reason to suppose that a Jat chief minister would make a difference to the

Congress8217;s showing in the Lok Sabha polls. Also, ironically, the problems today spring from another such contest: Ashok Gehlot8217;s claimed unpopularity in Jat communities dates from the party8217;s 1998 decision to choose him, a Gandhi family loyalist since 1980, over the local party committee chairman Parasram Maderna.

Leadership contests should ideally be open and transparent, in which all candidates and their supporters feel that they have fairly won or lost. Failing that, parties should not be coy about who leads their state units. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress suffered from not having a face to their campaign that could be compared to the BJP8217;s CM Chouhan. The party should have learned by now that stifling or postponing choices of this sort doesn8217;t help its chances.