Opinion Staging a fight-back
Why the Congress focused on the BJP to take on other rivals
Routine life in the Delhi suburb of Burari has been stirred up a good deal not only by SUVs ferrying the important ones,but also by the can-do rhetoric emanating from the Congress plenary. The message being sought to be sent out is of a feisty and adaptive party that could be both in government and opposition at the same time of a leadership reaching out to the aam aadmi and the party worker,with government ministers told off and asked to pay more heed to their cardholders,to have their ears to the ground.
Yet,in all the mixed messages emanating from the 83rd plenary of the Congress of moderate Manmohan Singh,radical Sonia Gandhi and analytical Rahul Gandhi the loudest was the one that had not been issued. It was that the party,in the near future,is planning a retreat,a collective brainstorming like the Pachmarhi and Shimla shivirs (camps),where it will reshape and rethink its line on key policies and issues. Despite its comfortable and heartwarming result in 2009,the party clearly senses its political space could be shrinking and is keen to reinvent.
Four major states West Bengal,Kerala,Tamil Nadu and Assam are going to the polls in 2011,and then UP and Gujarat over the next two years. That the possible outcome in most of the states,as of now at least,gives the Congress little reason to rejoice must be a cause for concern. With the exception of Assam and Kerala,the Congress may well exult or despair at the plight of others,but it will largely be in the periphery. That must be cause for worry,even if it is not boldly acknowledged,for a party that likes to identify itself with the idea of India.
Change has always come slowly to the Congress,a party that grew out of a movement that,despite having espoused revolutionary ideas of liberating India from the Raj,often went with the flow and practised the politics of accommodation. Its USP,it claims,is that it is an umbrella party,a catch-all party which by definition is one that accommodates. When change comes,it does so in ways least imagined by those watching from the outside. In recent decades,radical change has always been driven by a charismatic leader (like Indira Gandhi in the 1970s or Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s) rather than through a collective party programme. Maybe that is why the current party president deserves more credit than what usually comes her way. On her watch,party camps have been held to deliberate on crucial questions about its line,especially the prickly issues of coalitions,helping restore to the Congress a sense of being an organisation that matters.
The purpose of launching a tirade against the BJP (by targeting the RSS directly on terror issues) was perhaps intended to give its workers talking points at a time when they feel the afterglow of the 2009 victory to be fading rapidly. But it also served to restore to the Congress its claim to being the rallying secular party,as the forthcoming state polls are mostly a fight between parties that swear to be on its side of the secular divide. Trying to isolate the BJP,by hoping that they spring to the defence of the RSS,can only help the Congress to widen the already considerable gap between the BJP and the non-NDA opposition.
The plenary also had a silent underlying goal: to set itself apart from the new wannabes in several key states,forceful personalities who are replicating the umbrella nature of the Grand Old Party.
Despite the demise of the Third Front as a viable pre-poll project,interesting personalities in the state level are threatening the Congresss sole claim to being the all-embracing party of governance. Orissas Naveen Patnaik and UPs Mayawati are fiercely independent and non-aligned to either of the two poles of the Congress and the BJP. The BJPs chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh,who dont display the somewhat muscular politics of Narendra Modi and yet seem to be reasonable vote catchers,too pose an immense challenge to the Congress. In the Congresss own UPA,a cabinet minister,Mamata Banerjee,seems to want to topple the Left in West Bengal as a single-person party,yielding no quarter and threatening the Congress with the prospect of a prolonged autumn in Kolkata even if the Left citadel is breached. While the DMK is on the defensive at this point,irrespective of whether the DMK and the Congress stay together or not,the GOP has a long haul ahead in Tamil Nadu.
Nitish Kumars rise and rise in Bihar was the big wake-up call for the Congress just last month. And while he has been publicly applauded by the Congress,his thumping victory has staggered the Congress,giving the NDA its first meaningful victory after 2008. Nitish,in fact,has dented the Congresss claim to be the only face of secular good governance.
A crucial aspect of good governance the absence of large-scale pilferage or loot of public funds by a few had the party on the defensive at Burari. In spite of highlighting the PMs personal integrity,not much has been said by way of praising the governments role in the matter in fact,the party has suggested a five-point mantra for the government to follow. The Congresss unease almost casts it as a party of opposition. Clearly,the party is concerned about reaping the consequences that came in 1989 when the opposition made corruption the overriding electoral issue.
All said and done,as a party that successfully transformed itself from a loosely run movement to one that ruled India for more than five decades of its 63 years,the Congress realises the place that rituals have played in its political journey. The plenary was a grand opportunity that the party leadership got to talk to its middle-level karyakarta,without interruptions from an irreverent opposition and this is one opportunity,as even David Mulford would agree,the Congress did not miss.
seema.chishti@expressindia.com
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