The beleaguered Congress has been trying to find ways to get out of the rut that it has got itself into after a series of electoral debacles in the last decade. Its inability to project a cohesive, decisive and vibrant leadership ever since it lost power at the Centre has certainly played a role in this, but attempts at revitalisation have focused more on quickly regaining electoral viability than on addressing serious structural issues. Prashant Kishor, the much sought-after election strategist who has successfully advised several parties on how to leverage new media tools, messaging and promotion of leaders, might not have joined the Congress, but his diagnosis of what ails the party is not without merit. Beginning after Independence as the flag bearer of secularism, social democracy, scientific temper, planned development and strategic autonomy on global matters, the party managed to retain its primacy for decades because of the legitimacy of its leadership that played a central role in the freedom movement and who articulated these values clearly during their struggles. Dissension within and discontent against the party on the issue of authoritarianism (the Emergency), the post-Mandal rise of OBC-based parties, and the gradual federalisation of India’s polity led to its decline. Soon it was bested by the rise of the religious right, which managed the politics of caste arithmetic far better in the Hindi heartland and western India and thrived because of the strong presence of a cadre-based force, besides a decisive leadership, articulating its ideology and agenda.
The lack of a structured cadre base that could trumpet the Congress’s legacy and achievements is a severe weakness. But the inability to state ideological positions and values clearly is another disadvantage — by seeking to remain a big tent of ideas, the Congress has in the past been numbed into vapid centrism or taken recourse to opportunist use of non-secular values seeing its effect in the rise of the BJP. There is no magic bullet for these weaknesses, but it would not hurt to kindle internal democracy to reconstitute the party’s leadership at various levels. Thoroughgoing elections as a procedure should rev up the party’s organisation, clarify what it truly stands for — based on its founding principles and how its sympathisers and members articulate them during the electoral process — and also bring about a decisive leadership that will legitimately claim the position based on the results of the elections rather than familial legacy. This exercise should enable it to later engage with like-minded political forces (many parties that were formed after splintering from the parent Congress) and face the electorate with better cohesion.
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