Courage and spine have never been strong points of the post-independence Congress party with the result that party leaders have always fought shy of doing honest introspection on setbacks in elections lest they annoy the bigwigs.
With the party in a free fall after the decade-long rule of the Manmohan Singh government ended, there is strong reason to introspect and search for correctives, but anything that entails laying any blame at the door of party president Sonia Gandhi and her heir-apparent son Rahul is taboo for a party steeped in sycophancy and subservience.
The coming days require a leadership that is strong and vibrant but does the party have the wherewithal to combat the challenge? It appears not, but there is no dearth of surprises in politics.
If staunch loyalists like Digvijay Singh and Amarinder Singh have started voicing their support for a change in party leadership now, it would be with either the tacit support of Sonia Gandhi or at her instance. It cannot be through individual bravado.
Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who has shepherded the party well on the whole, is now a tired supremo who wants to pass on the mantle but she would not brook anyone except her son staking claim to it.
Digvijay and Amarinder are too well-trained in the art of measured dissent to challenge her desire to anoint Rahul, though in their heart of hearts both have reservations over his ability to steer the Congress through turbulent times in the Narendra Modi era.
Apparently, Mrs Gandhi herself has reservations on Rahul’s abilities and is keen that he be insulated from critics with a shield that advisers like Digvijay and Amarinder may provide. Rumours of Rahul being deep into drugs are being discussed in hushed tones but nobody has the courage and gumption to mention these in the open.
Significantly, veteran of many battles Amarinder, who is vying for the chief ministership of Punjab if the Congress manages to displace the Akali-BJP combine in the Assembly elections has said in a recent television interview that the Congress high command should delegate more powers to state functionaries especially to fight “regional leaders” in their respective states.
Evidently, he would be averse to a young leadership at the Central level of the Congress breathing down his neck and thought it fit to subtly make the point at what he thought was an appropriate stage. Unlike most others, Amarinder is not a hangar-on and lackey. He does have a mind of his own but knows how to keep himself within the bounds of party discipline so long as his self-respect is not compromised.
Digvijay has from time to time made statements that reflect out of the box thinking but he too knows only too well which side his bread is buttered. But all said and done, he is a thinking individual and is therefore not a run-of-the-mill Congress politician.
When the party got a drubbing in the recent assembly elections, losing Assam and Kerala where they were in the saddle, Digvijay had this to say: “We have done enough introspection. Shouldn’t we go for a major surgery.” Speaking to a newspaper, Singh said: “After the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi had asked all senior Congress leaders to submit reports on the road ahead for the party and to hold discussions with state leaders. The deadline for submitting the report was February 20, 2015. We all submitted our reports, I also did. It is May 2016 and we are still awaiting action. So the question is: how long will the party introspect? Action on what all we told the party leadership is long overdue.”
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor from Kerala echoed the same sentiment when he said in another interview: “The time for introspection is now past. Time for action has come…It is time to move and it is time to make some visible changes that the world and the country can see because for a couple of years after 2014, the process for consideration, reflection, introspection and so on has been taking place. It is now time for the leadership to draw on the conclusion from their introspection and take necessary action.”
Both Amarinder and Digvijay are reconciled to Rahul’s elevation but would want their space in the new scheme of things.
The other Congress leaders are well aware that Sonia would be a party trump-card even in the future and would do everything to drive a wedge between Sonia-Rahul and these two leaders in the Congress style of intrigues and back-stabbing.
Yet, nobody is sticking his neck out to pin the blame for the poll defeats on Sonia and Rahul just as they had fought shying of doing after the Lok Sabha elections. All the frustration and disillusionment with the duo is kept bottled up.
How amenable a crowned Rahul would be towards his inner circle of young associates who wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the likes of Amarinder and Digvijay only time will tell.
But, while Rahul may manage to lord over the Congress with help from mother Sonia in the foreseeable future, outside the party he would be up against many challenges.
The most significant challenge is the National Herald case where BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has alleged that both Sonia and Rahul had cheated and created a breach of trust in the acquisition of now defunct National Herald by Young Indian Limited.
It is noteworthy that the Supreme Court had in February last declined to quash criminal proceedings against Sonia, Rahul and five others in the case.
Rahul’s Achilles heel is also his inability to argue his stand on crucial issues in depth and with irrefutable logic. That also accounts for his failure to sway masses.
There indeed are tough times ahead for the Congress party with Karnataka being the only major state where they hold the reins. The Rajya Sabha too is fast slipping out of their hands. The coming days require a leadership that is strong and vibrant but does the party have the wherewithal to combat the challenge? It appears not, but there is no dearth of surprises in politics.
