THE internal chaos now tormenting Congress party is threatening to escalate with time as many young leaders are now resigning from their current positions and looking at opportunities at the national level. These leaders, most of whom are around forty years of age, are eager to seek opportunities to function at the national level and lead the party in times of crisis. Even as some people may see this as a welcome sign, those who have understood the organisational dynamics of the party over decades also realise that Congress may be heading for doom in the years to come if the leadership group does not grow fully serious about what they wish to do.
The first and the foremost thing they will have to avoid is frivolousness that actually pulled the organisation down to the dumps in the past ten years. If this realisation does not dawn upon the leadership group, then the party’s future could be in jeopardy, to say the least. Was it not the then Prime Minister and Congress President Mr. Rajiv Gandhi who had during the party’s centenary said that ‘Congress is the Ganga of Indian polity, but it needs to be cleansed’? Time has come to return to those prophetic words and implement the cleansing project which Mr. Rajiv Gandhi had envisaged years ago.
Unfortunately, however, nobody in Congress organisation even remembers that meaningful statement. Let alone others, even Mr. Rahul Gandhi does not remember the statement which his father made at the peak of his political popularity. Even though the party took a plunge during his leadership, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was known to be a person with a fair degree of maturity, which most in the leadership group of the Congress party seem to lack. For, had they been serious about what they wished the party to achieve, they would have put their foot down to stop Mr. Rahul Gandhi from making a mockery of the party through the slogan Chowkidar Chor Hai that actually cost the party all its vote in the recent general election. If the party is to rise above itself and make some sense out of its current condition, then the leadership group will have to be far more serious than they today are.
They will have to dump frivolous approach to organisational process and stop the insistence upon continuance of Mr. Rahul Gandhi as party chief. But that is not happening simply because Mr. Rahul Gandhi himself must be indulging in unholy machinations to retain his grip on the party. Outwardly, he may be talking of being firm on quitting, but the hidden agenda may be different, as a few political observers suspect. If this is going to be the true nature of internal politics in Congress, then its redemption may become a very tough task. For, no matter who leads the party, its internal dynamics will always be dominated by non-serious machinations. In the current situation in domestic politics, with such an approach, no party can ever think of challenging Mr. Narendra Modi and his hugely successful method of principled political management.
Young Congress leaders such as Mr. Sachin Pilot, Mr. Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mr. Milind Deora, Mr. Manish Tewari, Mr. Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mrs. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra and others now seem to be gearing up for bigger roles. There is a discount on being old and a premium on being young. Despite all this, there is reason to suspect that not much will change within the organisation. And if this is going to be a party working hard to maintain status quo, then its resurrection from the current political dumps may prove to be a pipedream. The worst part of the Congress party today is that it has lost its moral foundation. For, even those who knew the party as the actual ‘Ganga of Indian polity’, too, do not harbour much hope of redemption. And that is where the real drag is.