The attempt by 23 senior Congress leaders to demand long overdue organisational reforms is a welcome sign. What is ironic, however, is that many signatories, with honourable exceptions, of the letter demanding a “full time and effective leadership” and transparent elections to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) are themselves part of the current decrepit top echelon of the party. Apparently, in response to the letter, Sonia Gandhi has asked the CWC to find a new president. It remains to be seen whether in a knee-jerk reaction they will nominate Rahul Gandhi once more. Some senior leaders including the Punjab Chief Minister have already come out in support of the Gandhis continuing at the helm.
Many of the current CWC members and other senior leaders realise that if a genuine revamping of the leadership takes place they will lose their positions. This is what makes the intent of many of the signatories suspect. At best they can be compared to the Mensheviks of pre-revolution Russia when what the Congress needs today is a cadre of Bolsheviks committed to a total structural and ideological overhaul of the party and removal of the deadwood in the high command.
No signs of reshaping the party
There are no signs so far of an alternative leadership committed to radically reshaping the party emerging within the Congress. Leave alone Bolsheviks there is no sign even of a group similar to the Young Turks who appeared in the wake of the Congress’s “poor” performance in the 1967 Lok Sabha election when the Congress won over 54% of the seats which was significantly lower than its share in the previous three elections then.
Today the Congress holds less than 10% of the Lok Sabha seats but no one challenged the discredited leadership after the debacle in the 2019 election. Members of the CWC tried to outdo each other in pleading with Rahul Gandhi to stay on as the party president and when he refused, they beseeched his mother, in what appeared to be a choreographed act, to take over the position.
The current demand by some senior Congress leaders for a range of reforms, including full-time leadership, does denote that they have finally woken up to the fact that the party faces major problems. But they still do not seem willing to face the reality that the problems they identify are merely symptoms and not the underlying cause of the party’s decay which has its origins in Indira Gandhi’s autocratic style and her determination to consolidate almost all power in her and her family’s hands.
Reasons for decline
There are two fundamental causes of the party’s decline. The first is the entrenched culture of sycophancy and dynastic “demigoddery” (to coin a new term) that leads to one Gandhi replacing another. This has become so embedded in the party’s DNA that it is evident even in the letter demanding major reforms in the party’s functioning. According to reports, the signatories to the letter make clear that the Gandhi family will continue to remain an integral part of the “collective leadership” of the party. This is the height of disingenuousness and re-opens the door to dynastic dominance.
Taking the bull by the horns
The second fundamental cause of the Congress’s decline is the severe dilution, indeed the near total surrendering, of the party’s ideological distinctiveness based on its commitment to the maintenance of pluralism as the bedrock of Indian democracy. The tendency not to challenge the ruling party’s homogenising ideology has made the Congress appear as the BJP’s B team. The last two elections demonstrated that the Indian electorate is not so naïve as to choose a pale imitation over the genuine article. In addition to organisational overhaul the Congress needs ideological regeneration that returns it to its philosophical moorings honed during the freedom movement. There is little sign that the party’s leadership, with a few exceptions, is willing to take the ideological bull by the horns.
Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University