The only party that can is Congress, but this is unlikely to happen if it remains an adjunct of the Gandhi family. There was a time when it was necessary for the party to remain subservient to the family, because it was the Gandhi name that attracted voters. That time has gone.
How many more elections does the Congress Party need to lose before it realizes that it is time to reincarnate itself as the political party it once was? After somehow managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Haryana, the usual noises were all we heard. Congress leaders who on the morning of the results had made a huge show of distributing jalebis and bursting firecrackers in anticipation of a ‘huge victory’ immediately blamed EVM tampering for this not having happened.
After the results came last Tuesday, many, many Congress leaders have come up with many, many theories about why an election that seemed won was suddenly lost. Theories ranged from blaming local party leaders for squabbling publicly about who deserved to be chief minister, to deep analyses of complex caste equations. Mystifyingly some blamed the BJP for using these caste complexities against Congress. Finally, when the news sank into the heads of those who constitute the Congress Party’s ‘high command’, we heard of a committee being set up to examine what went wrong. Those who spread this piece of news assured sceptics that this time the committee would really do its job. And this time there would be real introspection thereby admitting that this is not what happened after that sad litany of past defeats.
Nobody blamed Rahul Gandhi for running a bad campaign. Nobody dared say that since he managed to win enough seats in the Lok Sabha to become Leader of the Opposition, he has shown signs of dangerous arrogance. In recent speeches, he has taken to mocking the Prime Minister for walking with a hunch now that his vaunted ‘56” chest has shrunk’. This is not a political comment, but a silly personal remark. There is a school-boyish quality to his mockery, his speeches and unfortunately to the political and economic views he expresses.
Politically, the message of his speeches during these elections has been as always singular: get rid of Modi. And replace his shop of hate with Rahul’s shop of love. Fine. But not exactly an alternative political vision. Nor are the hysterics over the caste census clear since he never says whether this means that already large reservations for lower castes need to be doubled. While campaigning in the Kashmir Valley, he never made clear whether he shares the view that Article 370 needs to be revived.
His economic ideas are clearer but very worrying. He remains obsessed with Gautam Adani to an embarrassing degree, and it harms him more than it does Modi. He has been repeating, ad nauseam, that Modi works only in the interests of his handful of billionaire friends and that it is he, when his chance comes, who will force banks to give ordinary workers and peasants the money that has been given only to men like Adani. Here we get a glimpse of the kind of economic policies he will make when he gets a chance. He has an economic worldview that verges on Marxist.
When will someone remind Rahul that India was socialist for decades under his family’s rule and all that was achieved was the redistribution of poverty. Whenever I have talked with Congress loyalists about Rahul’s weaknesses, they say that his sister is a better leader. She is certainly a better public speaker, but somehow every time I have heard her speak, I have heard her mostly talk about her grandmother and the sacrifices that her family has made. When it comes to her political and economic ideas nobody has the faintest idea what these might be.
If the Congress Party is to regain its old glory it needs to stop being an adjunct of the Dynasty. It needs to reimagine that long ago time when it had certain values. Secularism, healthy nationalism and basic decency. We need a political party that stands for these things because there is no question that the political ideas that have dominated the landscape in the past ten years have been hateful and poisonous. So much so that communal riots no longer need to be organized because ordinary Hindus have imbibed the scary idea that it is normal to hate and kill Muslims.
If the Congress Party had in the past ten years made a real effort to redefine its foundational values and rebuild its vanished grassroots appeal it is possible that it would have won many more seats in the Lok Sabha. During the Lok Sabha campaign, I met many voters who said that if they ended up voting for Modi for a third time it was because they did not see Rahul Gandhi as a convincing alternative. When I asked why not they usually replied that he needed to ‘mature’. What is clear is that whether he matures or not, he still seems unable to convince voters that he stands for policies that would improve their lives.
There is no question that the BJP has lost the appeal it once had, and that Modi has lost his magic, but they will remain undefeatable until another political party can take them on nationally. The only party that can is Congress, but this is unlikely to happen if it remains an adjunct of the Gandhi family. There was a time when it was necessary for the party to remain subservient to the family, because it was the Gandhi name that attracted voters. That time has gone.
