Congress should become politically accountable

Congress should target BJP with surgical strike and should hold elections to the key organisational posts from the level of State chief and district chiefs to AICC chief if it does not want to remain in opposition for next 50 years, the "dissenters" feel.

Yes, they are right. If the Congress wants to take on the BJP it cannot do it in this fuddy, duddy, grand old party, style. Unless the Congress utilises this opportunity and re-invents itself, it cannot bounce back and give confidence to the people that they have an alternative to the ruling NDA government led by BJP.

It is the bounden duty of the grand old party to create this confidence among the people if democracy in the country has to survive. There can be anything like one nation one tax, one nation, one election but there cannot be one nation one party at the political level. The Congress party should not see the ongoing crisis in the party as a fight between the old guard and new. It needs to exhibit highest level of political accountability.

It should realise that despite having a weak leadership after its debacle in 2014 and despite taking wrong decisions like allying with some political parties including TMC, AAP and TDP without creating any formidable front and giving a joint fight and in spite of creating lack of trust among the people due to various flip flops, the party managed to get 52 seats in 2019 elections.

It indicates that it has the potential to bounce back. All that it needs is to exercise political accountability at the highest level and someone should come out and say that the blame game has to stop and drastic and dramatic changes need to be made in the party's organisational structure. This is what the 23 Congress leaders had said in their letter to Sonia Gandhi few days before the CWC meeting which resulted in lot of noise by the Durbaris and unfortunately Rahul and Sonia Gandhi also sided with them. Politics is always a dynamic situation and hence the party too should evolve itself to the changing circumstances and go in for sweeping changes in the party.

In sports if a team loses few matches the coach or the team leader is sacked or at least kept aside for next few matches. But in politics there is nothing like accountability. If Congress does not want to perish, it should go in for major reforms. In Congress party, seniors have been glued to their posts for ages. There have been no organisational elections for past 23 years. Even the Congress Working Committee members were nominated and not elected.

It is unfortunate that the Durbaris in Congress who have been drumming up support for the Gandhi family's hegemony and claim that only they can run the party and none else as they had sacrificed their lives for the party should also recall the history of the party where apart from Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, the party had presidents like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Sarojini Naidu and P V Narasimha Rao as well.

To say that the party cannot survive without the Gandhi family leading it is only an attempt by those who do not have people's support and could not emerge as cadre based leaders. It clearly indicates that the propaganda that the Congress has too much of internal democracy has no meaning. It shows that the party leaders are not confident of their own individual strength. No army can win a battle just because the commander is strong. The soldiers too need to be strong enough. In Congress unfortunately, neither the commander is strong nor the soldiers.

One thing is clear. If the BJP has to be challenged in the interest of democracy, it is necessary that a real secular, liberal and democratic Congress party with progressive thinking should emerge.

Though the UPA II returned to power in 2009 improving its earlier performance and won over 200 seats, it started facing credibility crisis within one year following charges of corruption and maladministration. Nothing was going right for the government. In 2010 December, the Congress plenary session held at Burari in Delhi gave a call that Rahul Gandhi take over the responsibility and put in place his own team. This demand came from the young and not so young who belonged to members from political families. It felt that the party badly needs Kayakalp. But Rahul was reluctant to take up the responsibility. The reluctance continues even now. Even after the drubbing it received in 2014, the party failed to come out of the syndrome of nominations at all levels.

Though the reluctant Rahul Gandhi took over as AICC president in December 2017, he could create a functional team comprising of both old and young hands to help him overhaul the party.

In the backdrop of this situation, the letter written by 23 leaders seeking organisational elections which raised lot of hue and cry assumes importance. But the party's top leadership still does not appear to be in a mood for a 'real introspection'. On the other hand it is behaving in a manner which would further damage the party's image. It has now started resorting to clipping the wings of those who were signatories to the letter namely Ghulam Nabi Azad who is the floor leader in Rajya Sabha.

What Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi should understand is if weakest party president Sitaram Kesri and P V Narasimha Rao who did not have the kind of support Sonia and Rahul have could hold organisational elections, why not the Gandhi family? It only shows that they have no intention to democratise the party.

Instead of using the opportunity to announce elections, they not only pounced on the 23 leaders who advocated elections but also went in for a knee-jerk reaction where Sonia Gandhi tried bring different non Congress chief ministers like West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and others on one platform to take on the Centre for delay in GST compensation. It also wants to make this as an issue for discussion in the monsoon session of the Parliament which would be held in September. But then the GST council meeting virtually bulldozed all the voices that expressed their concern over non-reimbursement of GST money to the states despite promise it had in 2017 to make good any loss of revenue in the first five years. All that the Congress party could say after the GST meeting was that the government has given up consensus and taken to majoritarian attitude.

The party unfortunately always fails to convert crisis into opportunity. If the Corona pandemic has affected GST collection as the Centre claims, then the Congress still has a chance to utilise this for taking on the Government. It can make use of the promises made by NDA-II and how they failed. It can highlight the failure of the Centre to compensate the states in a big way and come with new proposals halfway.

The Congress party can also take on the government explaining that breach of trust in regard to GST was not a first such action by the NDA government. It had breached the promise of special status category to Andhra Pradesh though the Congress PM Manmohan Singh had announced it on the floor of Rajya Sabha. Just as it has now come up with two options in regard to GST, it offered equivalent special package to AP with weird conditions which goes against the interest of the state exchequer and later dumped it blaming the state government for not utilising the offer.

The Congress could have also cashed in on how the Centre supported setting up of capital city of Andhra Pradesh at Amaravati on the floor of Assembly when it was in alliance with TDP both at centre and in state, how the Prime Minister took holy water and soil from Delhi and presented it to the people of AP and promised hand holding in developing a capital that would be much better than Delhi and how now when the present government wants to shift capital to Vishakhapatnam the Centre says 'Not Before Me'.

But instead of the Congress taking on the government and winning the trust and support of people, it is continuing its fight against its own leaders who want elections at all levels. On one hand the Durbaris say that they want Rahul to become the Prime Minister. They say he now even looks like his father in the new hair style. Well all that makeover is fine and appreciable. But what about the makeover of the party organisation?.

Unless, the party undergoes total overhaul and gives a new image to itself and becomes aggressive at the ground level and goes into the people with well planned concrete people oriented agenda and succeeds in effectively exposing the omissions and commissions of the governments both at the Centre and in States and stands by people it cannot dream of coming to power even next time.