The Prince and the Party

When Jawaharlal Nehru took over the reins of the Congress Party, Sarojini Naidu felt she was envisaging both 8220;the Coronation and the Crucifixion8221;.

When Jawaharlal Nehru took over the reins of the Congress Party, Sarojini Naidu felt she was envisaging both 8220;the Coronation and the Crucifixion8221;. She added, in an oddly reassuring way, that 8220;the two are inseparable and synonymous in some circumstances and some situations.8221; Rahul Gandhi8217;s induction as general secretary, by contrast, has more a sense of inevitability than the aura of a defining moment. But it has at least one redeeming feature: the Congress at last seems to be waking up to the potential of a younger generation of leaders in its own party. By giving responsible positions to a range of younger leaders, Gandhi has avoided at least one trap: that his induction will perhaps be seen more as a comment on his special dispensation than a commitment to generational change. Until this moment Gandhi8217;s youth, rather than carrying a new generation with him, signified his distance from them; his presence more a reminder of old Congress ways rather than a charting of a new course.

But there is still a long way to go in terms of the party achieving genuine generational shift. For one thing, the upper echelons of power are still too dominated by old coteries. Second, the generational shift has to be about something more than age; it has to signify new sensibilities, values, aspirations and institutional innovation and connect these to the aspirations of the masses. But the generation that Gandhi represents still has to define what it stands for; it still has to set the terms of debate.

This point is not without some political significance. What the Congress needs is to draw in newly emerging constituencies of all kinds. One of the reasons the party has remained relatively stagnant is that it has not been able to draw in new constituencies and aspirations. First it missed out on incorporating the newly emerging castes during the seventies and eighties. This was largely because its party structure remained closed, centralised and without a modicum of intra-party democracy. In the absence of clear party rules, new constituencies are not sure how to redirect a party towards their own ends. We ended up with a political equilibrium, where newly emerging political groups, rather than remoulding existing parties, preferred to create their own. There is very good evidence that this trend continues and will pose a great challenge to the Congress.

Second, although there was a fleeting attempt under Rajiv Gandhi to reposition the party as a modernising force, Congress badly misjudged the politics of caste and communalism and paid the price. For a brief while, urban India, that should have been Rajiv Gandhi8217;s natural constituency, was profoundly alienated and contributed to the rise of the BJP. And, to put it simply, the romance went out of the Congress Party; it was no longer the party where energetic new leaders, with that peculiar combination of idealism and personal ambition that characterises good politicians, could find a home. It became a party defined more by subservience than creativity, more ideological passivity than the ability to set a new agenda, and more by a moribund organisational structure than a powerful party machine. The induction of Rahul Gandhi would have served a great political purpose if it had helped overcome this deficit in the Congress, or if it energised new constituencies to put their weight behind it. But it is far from clear that any of this is likely to happen.

His biggest challenge will be to send a message that he intends, not to seek comfort in his inheritance but go beyond it. This will require at least fighting on four fronts simultaneously. First, if the Congress is to be an inclusive party it has to revamp its organisational structure bottom up. One of the smart things Mayawati did in crafting her electoral victory was not, as is commonly supposed, knitting together an upper caste and dalit coalition. It was rather to ask the question, constituency by constituency: who is capable of delivering the required votes, and then finding a way of getting them into the party. In other words, the party has to be rebuilt bottom up by a small cabal deciding who is fit to run based on a calculus that has little to do with electoral politics. In the long run genuine intra-party democracy is the only way of ensuring that the party is restored to health.

Second, the Congress needs desperately to get rid of dead wood in the party; senior leaders whose have neither the intellectual base, nor the electoral assets, or administrative acumen to warrant responsible positions in government. That would truly signify a change.

Third, the party needs to get its ideological story right. It is in danger of losing reformers because it seems to run away from its success, and of not attracting back its natural constituency, the poor because it is simply not effective enough.

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Fourth, it needs leadership that genuinely appears like one, that is not afraid to think its own thoughts, and take its case to the public. Although young, Rahul Gandhi has been in politics long enough. Yet no one really seems to know what he stands for. Leadership is about the ability to get others to follow you, not about second guessing what others might want. Some of the coldness, outside Congress sycophants, that Gandhi8217;s induction invokes is precisely because there are not any ideas to engage with 8211; at least not yet. No one expects him or any politician to be an intellectual, but people do expect them to have a centre of some sort, an orienting point where they can place them, one that is sincerely held and effectively communicated. He will have to struggle with the fact that politics requires not the sincerity of an NGO, but an ability to project authority for doing good.

Gandhi8217;s induction is not much of a signal that the Congress is ready to battle on all these fronts. The opposition8217;s self destructiveness is a great boon for the Congress; but a party that relies on the weakness of its opponents rather than any genuine strength of its own is liable to be shocked sooner or later. Sarojini Naidu had told Jawaharlal that his office had been given to him both as a tribute and as a challenge, 8220;and it is the challenge that will transmute all your noblest qualities into a dynamic force.8221; Rahul8217;s office still has the aura of an inheritance. Whether he can transmute it into a challenge, and transfigure himself in the process is still an open question.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research