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The return of Bansi Lal8217;s Haryana Vikas Party HVP to the Congress fold is a good measure of the party8217;s strengths and weaknesses. The good news is that the party is finally allying with itself. It is gathering together disparate factions and leaders that it had lost over the course of a decade. The exit of these factions had little to do with ideology or principle. And the allure of power is now sufficient to lure them back. Two developments 8212; the party8217;s coming to power at the Centre and the inner-party squabbles of its rivals 8212; were bound to cause a significant realignment. And the HVP8217;s proposed merger is a symptom of that process. In the short run, the return of groups like the HVP will help the electoral consolidation of the Congress, and may even halt the needless fragmentation of the party system as a whole.

But the bad news is that 8212; in its zeal to induct the old 8212; the Congress party may end up ultimately looking very much like its old, uninspiring self: with a party apparatus dominated by the relics who had given us the Emergency and had converted corruption into a new art form. The fact that the Congress8217;s hopes are pinned on the likes of Bansi Lal suggests that although the party has a new opportunity to break out of its old mould, it does not quite have a new ideology or organisation to achieve that transformation 8212; at least not yet. The enduring power of individuals like Bansi Lal is a testament to the fact that unless you inherit political power, it is not easy for new entrants to break the oligarchies that dominate politics at the local level. Haryana, like Punjab, seems destined to be dominated by a small number of families. Although this is understandable in terms of political compulsions, it is a shame that even a party as well positioned as the Congress has had to incorporate these entrenched structures of power rather than transform them.

The manner in which factions are incorporated back into the party also exposes the principal weakness of our party system as a whole. Few parties have robust intra-party democracy that allows them to incorporate new groups in a transparent and democratic manner. Which groups are in and which groups are out depends more on the whims of the central leadership and its calculations. Access to power within parties is negotiated by small elites rather than settled by open contestation. If Congress wants to make the most of this opportunity it will have to devise democratic mechanisms to ensure the incorporation of new social groups and leaders. It is a shame that the Congress8217;s path to electoral consolidation has to depend on the same old faces that had once given it a bad name in the first place.