THE reconstituted Congress Working Committee (CWC) with a few members of the rebel G-23 appears to be a new start that the grand old party of Indian politics seems to seek. This development ahead of the ensuing election season is obviously an attempt to get ready for the challenge ahead. With some members asserting that they would try to strengthen the party’s ideology, the restructuring indicates the party’s effort to flog a new life into the otherwise dull and deadpan organisation into which new ideas stopped coming decades ago. But all this envisioning has a proviso, so to say -- of the whims and fancies of the so-called high command of the party, the Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka Gandhi family. If the family wills, things happen. If the family shows no interest, then things freeze all by themselves. Yet, the fact that party President Mr. Mallikarjun Kharge has reconstituted the CWC shows that some serious thinking is going on within the organisation ahead of the election season.

 

The inclusion of some members of G-23 means obviously that the party wants to include all sections of membership at the decision-making level. Whether decision-making will really take place in the CWC or not, one does not know. However, the latest reconstitution of the top body demonstrates at least a cosmetic willingness to effect change in the pattern of thought and action of the Congress. In a party stuck in the leadership trap of the Gandhi family, this is not bad bargain, so to say. The biggest difficulty of the Congress party is that it does not have the necessary depth of thinking and firmness of ideological commitment. On the ground of reality, therefore, the Congress party, therefore, appears to be an organisation with scant respect for its roots and for its ideology with whose help it should normally seek to shape the society and the country. This intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy has been growing in the past few decades -- say for about 40 years past. If the reconstituted CWC shows courage to change that condition, it may achieve something tangible not just for the party but also for national politics. Inclusion of people like Dr. Shashi Tharoor and Mr. Anand Sharma in the new CWC indicates that there would be moments of deeper contemplation on many ideological and operational issues in the top body. On the ideological front, there was not much to discuss since that thought-process has been coming down from generation to generation, so to say.

 

What will matter most is how the party approaches practical challenges and issues that the political whirlpool of the country would throw up from time to time. The reconstituted CWC would naturally be expected to guide that process. If the CWC and the high command have the patience to listen to the voice of dissent, then it may be able to flog a new life into the party that is rapidly sinking in every possible aspect. It is not possible to fathom correctly what is in the mind of the high command (read ‘Gandhi family’). But the fact that Mr. Rahul Gandhi chose to stay away in Ladakh when this exercise of reconstitution of the CWC was going on shows that the Gandhi family appears interested in creating an impression of complete freedom to the President and the CWC. But this is more likely to be a cosmetic exercise -- as most political observers would tend to infer. If the reconstituted CWC is able to make really a fresh start, then only will it be possible for the Congress party to expect some good electoral rewards in the forthcoming election season. In other words, the CWC will require adequate and appropriate powers and authority to think and act on the strength of its collective wisdom if at all the party truly wants to do well for itself in the future. Will that ever be possible?