Opinion Mallikarjun Kharge elected as Congress president: Election as portent

Zoya Hasan writes: No matter which way you look at it, the Congress presidential poll is a breakthrough moment for Congress and for the party system. New president faces large organisational, ideological and tactical challenges

Although Tharoor lost the election, his decision to contest and post a spirited campaign despite the odds being stacked against him provided enormous credibility to the election process. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar)

October 21, 2022 08:45 AM IST First published on: Oct 20, 2022 at 07:16 PM IST

The Congress party’s presidential elections have triggered huge interest as political parties in this country rarely conduct internal elections. The dominance of elections in India’s democratic system doesn’t extend to the parties contending in it, which are always run top-down. Most parties are subservient to one or two supreme leaders. Electoral defeat does not loosen their control or hold over the party.

Comparative evidence from other democracies, however, shows that the general trend is toward greater internal democracy, decentralisation, transparency and accountability within parties. Parties in Europe and North America have made strong moves to democratise nomination and leadership selection processes to make them open to broader electorates. The process of choosing a new leader for the Conservative Party in Britain and the widely publicised debates between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak exemplify this template.

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Congress has not held internal elections for decades; neither have other parties. There have been only five elections in the party’s 137-year-old history. The high stakes contest between Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor was only the sixth. Not surprisingly, it drew a massive turnout of electors with close to 96 per cent of Pradesh Congress Committee delegates casting their ballot. Kharge won the election, beating Tharoor 7,897 to 1,072 in terms of votes.

Although Tharoor lost the election, his decision to contest and post a spirited campaign despite the odds being stacked against him provided enormous credibility to the election process. Besides, his candidature may already have stirred things up: The need for change and for more effective inner party democracy has moved centrestage.

The significance of the election cannot be overstated. As the chairman of the Central Election Authority of the Congress, Madhusudan Mistry, put it, “Congress party has shown what internal democracy is and other parties that want to take a lesson from it can do so.” This signals two things: One, other parties, especially its principal rival, have to live up to the standards it expects of others; two, Congress itself will need to democratise the party at various levels and not limit itself to holding elections for the top post. Parties in India generally lack inner party democracy and don’t hold elections. Top positions are often decided by consensus, and not election. For example, the BJP extended JP Nadda’s tenure as president again till 2024, but there’s no clarity about the process followed in taking such decisions.

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No matter which way we look at it, the presidential election in Congress is a breakthrough moment for Congress and for India’s party system. It has addressed the most critical question about its leadership by electing its first non-Gandhi president in 24 years, marking a significant break from the past. Kharge will replace Sonia Gandhi who has been at the helm for over two decades. Also, his election sends a larger message given his social profile as a Dalit leader who has risen from the ranks. Hence, his election has the potential to alter the dispensation at the top, diluting to some extent the dynasty plus elitism charge.

Unsurprisingly, it will not stop its principal rival and the media from mocking the party. For the media, the Congress election was a charade. Media talk was dominated by predictable tropes — “unofficial official candidate”, “rubber stamp”, “remote control”, “cosmetic change”, “family in control” — epithets that deride and delegitimise the election process. However, the media’s search for internal democracy is seldom extended to other parties and their “election” and “selection” processes.

Media misgivings aside, the new president faces seemingly insurmountable organisational, ideological, and tactical challenges within the party and outside it. Establishing the authority and autonomy of the office of the president, while forging a healthy relationship with the Gandhis, will be the foremost challenge. At the same time, the party’s organisational reforms must be expedited to arrest its political decline.

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The absence of democracy at the bottom, together with the all-pervasive nomination culture, has resulted in a weak, ineffectual and strife-torn organisation. Kharge will also have to deal with dissensions and factionalism within Congress to stop further exits from the party. Lastly, the new president must perform the herculean task of forging creative links with non-BJP parties. Congress needs to forge strategic alliances with like-minded Opposition parties to put forth a credible challenge to the BJP in the next general elections.

The colossal task that awaits the Congress president is to reverse the organisational disrepair and the vote share slide of the party, which appears to be in permanent decline. He must hit the ground running — given that several assembly polls are scheduled in the coming months before the next general elections are due in just a little over 18 months. These include the Himachal Pradesh polls, which have already been announced, and the elections in Gujarat and later in Karnataka, Telangana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh. Congress is a key player in most of these states and needs a credible performance which is crucial for its survival.

The presidential elections and the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) are notable signs of change. The BJY from Kanyakumari to Kashmir has shown that the party can work unitedly in a mass contact programme and that it has the organisational bandwidth to pull off a massive and difficult exercise such as this yatra. The yatra has drawn huge crowds in the southern states. But the public support it has generated has to extend to mobilisation for elections.

For this process to go forward, the Congress needs to revamp its organisation and propagate a clear alternative vision to fight the BJP ideologically. The BJY has articulated a narrative of unity, equity, and diversity, but this must translate into an economic and political blueprint, communicated in imaginative ways, to make it acceptable to the vast numbers of people enchanted with the rhetoric of division and divergence.

Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, New Delhi, and the author of the recently published book Ideology and Organisation in Indian Politics: Polarisation and the Growing Crisis of the Congress Party (2009-19)