This week began with the formal announcement of the long-expected collapse of the Congress-National Conference alliance that, under the leadership of Omar Abdullah, has been ruling the sensitive state of Jammu and Kashmir since 2009. Parting is such sweet sorrow, said the Bard, but there is nothing either sweet or sorrowful about the parting of the ways between the two allies in Srinagar.
In as many as five states – in the east and west of the country – there have been revolts by Congressmen against the party ‘high command’, which really consists of just two leaders, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son and party vice-president, Rahul.
During the decade when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power, the party was a fiefdom of mother and son. Power resided at 10, Janpath, where Sonia Gandhi lives, not in the Prime Minister’s House at 7, Race Course Road. To an extent, the situation remains the same even now. For, no Congressman of any consequence is prepared to serve under anyone equivalent to him, but all competitors would meekly submit to the leadership of any member of the Gandhi family. However, there are wheels within wheels. The dynastic leader is deified when she or he leads the party to power, but is seen differently when s/he is unable to prevent a humiliating defeat. Even in 1977, when Indira Gandhi was at her nadir, something similar had happened to her even though she still had 150 seats in the Lok Sabha and 30 per cent of the vote. And yet the party split down the middle.
Moreover, Indira Gandhi had spectacularly returned to power in 33 months flat. Four years later, it was largely the people’s grief over her assassination that won Rajiv Gandhi a mind-boggling mandate. Also, it should not be forgotten that the Janata Party that had defeated her in the post-Emergency polls itself collapsed ignominiously under the weight of its own contradictions, aggravated by the clashing ambitions of its three top leaders with a collective age of 232. For the Congress to hope for any such luck now would be a delusion bordering on lunacy. Above all, none of her present-day descendants has even a fraction of Indira Gandhi’s mass following and political skills.
Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that Sonia Gandhi has not even held a Congress conclave of any kind to analyse the causes for the drubbing and to decide on ways to revitalise the demoralised party. Consequently, party members, deprived of inner-party democracy, are complaining privately and even semi-publicly, that Rahul’s heavily flawed leadership of the election campaign was the cause of the catastrophic defeat and that he is not the one who can lead the Congress back to power. No wonder, many are demanding that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra be brought into active politics. So far, Sonia Gandhi has shown no inclination to do so.
In addition to J & K, three other Congress-ruled states – Maharashtra, Assam and Haryana – are going to the polls to elect their state assemblies. In the Lok Sabha elections, the party took a drubbing in all these three states. Congress ranks in all three therefore demanded a change of chief ministers because the present ones were responsible for the rout and deserved immediate dismissal. At one stage, the Congress president seemed to agree. But she soon changed her mind, reportedly at the insistence of her son, which should explain what a section of the media is describing as a ‘mini-coup’ against Rahul Gandhi.
As for Jammu and Kashmir, the less said the better. Here, in the parliamentary poll, both the Congress and the NC, permanently at loggerheads with each other, had drawn a blank. Of the six Lok Sabha seats, three were won by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the other three by the People’s Democratic Party of Kashmir, bitterly opposed to the NC. Ironically, before joining hands with the NC, the Congress had ruled J & K in partnership with the PDP. The old alliance may be back at the time of the election this time around. Until then both the estranged present partners plan to keep the existing government going. Whether it would be possible to do so is a moot point.
Which is the fifth state that has also become a trouble spot for the despondent Congress? It is West Bengal, where no elections are due but Congress members of the state assembly are deserting their party to join the ruling party in the state, the Trinamool Congress, led by the feisty Mamata Banerjee. Three did so on Monday. Some more will follow them soon.
Inder Malhotra
