Can things get any worse for India's Grand Old Party? It is a telling comment on the state of affairs within the Congress that the only thing in recent times to have energised its rank and file turned out to be Jitendra Prasada's rather innocuous challenge on Sunday to Sonia Gandhi's leadership. More significantly, it has perhaps taken the execution of a much recommended remedy - a show of courage by a Congress leader to lend a semblance of inner-party democracy by enforcing elections for the post of party president - to highlight the glaring lack of options available to India's natural party of governance of yore. That Prasada's challenge is doomed from the very beginning is more than clear - from the fact that he was compelled to invoke the ghost of as insignificant a leader as Sitaram Kesri to drum up support; and from the desperation evident in his attempt to secure the posthumous blessings of Rajesh Pilot, whose own candidature for the hallowed post Prasada turned a blind eye to not so longago.And yet, it would be naive to underestimate the gauntlet thrown down by this chronic loyalist-turned-dissident. In a party which construes a challenge to the Nehru-Gandhi family's hegemony as akin to the severest manifestation of blasphemy, Prasada's five meagre sets of nomination papers - against Sonia's 80-plus - have shattered a few myths. For one, they have struck at her very raison d'etre: the presiding mother goddess of the Congress party, the precious adhesive that keeps India's largest opposition party together, the soothing balm that quells all dissent. Ever since the 1998 coup in which Sonia replaced Kesri in the course of a working committee meeting, even through the admittedly limited exodus engineered during the Amar-Akbar-Anthony revolt last summer, her spin doctors have not tired of reminding everyone - the nation and their own partymen - about her magnetic qualities. Sonia may still be the most acceptable leader to vast sections of the Congress - indeed the forthcoming partypolls will surely bear this out - but every vote registered by Prasada will carry a message. That there are enough party members who demand from her much more than a smile and a wave; that the dynastic halo in no way compensates for a repeatedly demonstrated reluctance to emerge from her ivory tower and take up the rough-and-tumble duties entrusted to the leader of the opposition.Another myth that has gained currency within the Congress is that any display of dissidence is best met with stony, and poignantly hurt, silence. It happened with Sharad Pawar and company, and it happened again with Kapil Sibal (though in this case with less injurious results). And it could happen again with Prasada. In fact, the grapevine has it that Prasada's candidature was a half-hearted one, that all he sought by way of consolation was an answer to his now famous letter of protest. If Sonia is really desirous of effecting a Congress revival, of staking a moral claim to Congress leadership, she will have to emerge from her cosy cocoon and engage with her rank and file, not just the "coterie". For Prasada the messenger may not be that critical to Congress fortunes, but the message he bears definitely is.
