Rahul Gandhi should skip CWC election for now

Rahul Gandhi should skip CWC election for now

FPJ BureauUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 11:40 PM IST
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Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, the BJP has earned the sobriquet of an election winning machine. From seven in 2014, as many as 20 states are now in BJP-led NDA kitty; though some states like Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya were annexed through questionable means. If everything is fair in love and war, so is in politics.  Modi-Shah duo, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Laloo Yadav, Nitish Kumar, K Chandrashekhra Rao are some of the wily politicians who have mastered the art of winning elections. And if there is anything common in them, it is that they are all high-handed, dictatorial and brook no internal democracy. In fact, the autocratic streak is a key ingredient in their alchemy of electoral success, an unfaltering tag though. In contrast, Congress president Rahul Gandhi is a pacifist who lacks these ‘hallmarks’ that, in normal times, are valuable political assets, but in a new normal eco-chamber winning elections ‘at any cost’ get all the thumbs-up.

Rahul is expected to kick-start the process of reconstituting the high-powered Congress Working Committee later this month. Party constitution stipulates that half of the 24-member CWC should be elected while the rest nominated by the president. His mother Sonia Gandhi did not hold elections for obvious reasons. Since a decade, Rahul has been advocating internal elections to Congress organisations — from students’ union to CWC — but with little success. While some confidants egg him on to have elections to the CWC, others caution him for fear that undesirable elements may capture key posts using money and muscle power; that candidates from rich and dynastic families can tilt the balance in their favour. Whereas, nomination route will enable the president to pick the right candidates to ensure better regional, religious, caste and gender representation. Internal democracy is not just a lofty ideal, but something that should be cherished and promoted. But, this is not the right time to go in for elections. The need of the hour is to strengthen the party machinery that is in shambles in many states.

CWC polls were last held in 1992 and 1997 when late Sitaram Kesri and PV Narasimha Rao helmed the party and the bitterly fought elections amplified the schism at the top while the cadre fought for their respective leaders. The priority, therefore, should be of rebuilding the organisation on a war footing rather than elections that can wait. Even legislators are now defecting in hordes to BJP as was witnessed in Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura recently. The defectors were not protesting absence of internal elections but a variety of other reasons galvanised them — BJP’s Machiavellian politics bolstered by huge resources, appointment of nit-wits, corrupt and laidback general secretaries as State in-charge, leaders’ lust for lucre, comfort and positions, the high command’s failure to read the writing on the wall and last but not the least deployment of manpower without application of mind.

A debilitating pattern has emerged over the years. Whenever the party loses a particular state, the general secretary in charge is shuffled to another state. He or she is packed off to yet another state in the event of another defeat. In the end, no heads roll, nobody taken to task. In less than two years, the party lost at least four states — Goa, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya due to sheer mismanagement by general secretaries as also due to cash crunch. In 2016, 43 out of 45 Congress MLAs in Arunachal defected en bloc to the NDA. The Congress failed to form its government in Manipur and Meghalaya despite emerging single largest.

Last over a decade, the north-eastern states were managed by general secretaries V Narayanaswamy and P C Joshi. Narayanaswamy, articulate neither in English nor Hindi, has been a classic case of faulty employment. He had no clue as to what BJP was cooking in Arunachal until the saffron party pulled the plug. After the Arunachal fiasco, he was shifted to Puducherry as chief minister. His replacement – Joshi – was another disaster. As in-charge of Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and north-east, many state leaders had complained against him to the high command, but Rahul gave him a long rope with calamitous consequences. Soon after Manipur results, while Amit Shah’s men camped in the state capital marshalling resources to form BJP government, Joshi was ensconced in the comforts of his Delhi office. Grapevine is that he shrugged off criticism saying that in the age of internet he need not be physically present in Imphal.

The appalling state of affair was such that on February 27, even before counting of votes, Nagaland Congress president Kewe Khape Therie, in an interview to the Indian Express, predicted that the party will draw a blank. He said that Joshi is responsible and demanded his resignation. In a telling comment, he said, after Joshi took charge as general secretary in June 2016, Arunachal rebel MLA Pema Khandu visited Delhi and sought appointments with Sonia and Rahul, but in vain. The reason: “it’s a week-end”, The Wire then quoted Joshi as having said justifying his not facilitating the meeting. Khandu then dialled PMO and got a prompt appointment with Modi. The rest is history. He left Congress and became a BJP chief minister.

Therie said Joshi visited Nagaland only once (in 20 months). “He failed in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland”. Therie said adding Joshi did visit Meghalaya a couple of time…”because there we are ruling. They can give him comfort.” How can the party win elections with such assets? It is evident that internal democracy is no panacea for all that ails the Grand Old Party. It has some semblance of leadership in key states like Rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, but has no mass leaders in crucial Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Gujarat and Odisha accounting for 250-odd Lok Sabha seats. This is the real challenge before Rahul Gandhi.

The author is an independent journalist.

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