The Congress is confronted with formidable political and organisational challenges in its 125th year.
AS far as political pulpit performances go, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were in top form at the 83rd plenary session of the party, which was held at Burari on the outskirts of Delhi. To praise the speeches made by the two leaders, a large number of the delegates and some political observers used phrases such as political masterstroke, taking the political bull by its horns, turning the table on the Opposition through determined political aggression and candour, path-breaking soul-searching and political thinking befitting the 125th anniversary of the grand old party of the country. Central to these observations were the remarks made by the two leaders on the issue of corruption in general and the corruption charges faced by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in particular.
Sonia Gandhi asserted that the Congress was committed to fighting corruption at all levels of society and unveiled a five-point plan to advance the combat with a new vigour. Manmohan Singh, besieged by the spate of corruption charges against his ministerial colleagues and rattled by the Supreme Court's remarks about his inaction and silence for 16 months in taking a decision on a complaint relating to the 2G spectrum allocation, asserted that he had nothing to hide. He even offered to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament and answer its queries on the 2G scam. The offer came in the context of the Opposition demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) inquiry into the scam and the related charge that the government opposed the demand because the JPC has the powers to summon the Prime Minister for questioning.
FIVE-POINT PLANSonia Gandhi's five-point plan included reinforcing the idea of state funding of elections; fast-tracking all cases against public servants, including politicians like us; ensuring transparency in public procurement; evolving an open, competitive system for industrial and commercial exploitation of natural resources; and shedding of discretionary powers by Chief Ministers and all Ministers, including those at the Centre, particularly in land allotment. She also exhorted Congress leaders in government to reconnect with the party organisation and ordinary workers. This was supplemented by the declaration that the leadership planned to hold a brainstorming session on the model of the 1998 Pachmarhi conclave and the 2003 Shimla chinthan shivir.
The Pachmarhi conclave addressed the issue of coalition politics at the national level, while the Shimla shivir paved the way for concretising alliances with various regional parties, including traditional rivals such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). In many ways, the Shimla shivir outlined the broad contours of a national alliance, with the Congress as the focal point for the 2004 Lok Sabha election. This in turn ensured the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and led to the formation of the first UPA government.
While these pronouncements did create in sections of the Congress some satisfaction that the leadership was taking steps to fight the challenge from the Opposition, both to the party and to the Central government, a number of activists and observers remained unconvinced. In fact, Sonia Gandhi herself was conspicuously sceptical during her inaugural address. While suggesting that Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of the Congress should shed their discretionary powers, particularly in the allotment of land, in order to fight corruption, she paused for a moment, in all probability anticipating a round of applause. But when none was forthcoming, she asked as an aside, No clapping for this?
The reason for the silence of the 10,000-odd delegates is that Congress Ministers at the Centre and in the States, barring a few, are used to availing themselves of the discretionary powers to grant favours to their kith and kin and supporters. Sonia Gandhi was suggesting that this practice should be done away with. The leaders were obviously not pleased.
A veteran political observer in Delhi tried in the days following the plenary to get the response of Congress Chief Ministers to the proposal. Significantly, none took a public stance. The larger message that emerged from the stony silence at the plenary and the stonewalling of the idea in the days that followed shows that it is one thing to make proclamations that enthuse some party workers and the public and another to implement them on the ground. Several veteran Congress leaders, including a senior Minister, underscored this fact. They recalled some of the bold and historic proclamations Rajiv Gandhi had made at the plenary session in 1985 to mark the Congress centenary. Rajiv Gandhi went hammer and tongs at power brokers in the party and vowed to get rid of that culture.
He said: Millions of ordinary Congress workers throughout the country are full of enthusiasm for the Congress policies and programmes. But they are handicapped, for on their backs ride the brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy. They are self-perpetuating cliques who thrive by invoking the slogans of caste and religion and by enmeshing the living body of the Congress in their net of avarice. For such persons, the masses do not count. Their lifestyle, their thinking or lack of it, their self-aggrandisement, their corrupt ways, their linkages with the vested interests in society, and their sanctimonious posturing are wholly incompatible with work among the people. They are reducing the Congress organisation to a shell from which the spirit of service and sacrifice has been emptied.
Rajiv Gandhi promised to change that culture of avarice and the corrupt ways in the party, but 25 years later the party leadership is once again talking more or less on the same lines. Indeed, the proclamations at Burari have been similar to the ones that we heard 25 years ago in Bombay [Mumbai], perhaps with less intensity. The real test will be in carrying out these promises. The very fact that the tone and tenor are similar shows that the promises made at the centenary session were not fulfilled, a senior Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh pointed out.
MISGIVINGSApart from this track record, a number of contemporary factors, too, have strengthened the misgivings in the Congress. They range from doubts about the political and economic policies being pursued to the government's inability to control prices to the tensions that have erupted or are threatening to break out in a number of State units of the party. The confusion at several levels of the party over the policies adopted by the Union government has found expression in different fora, albeit obliquely.
Speaking at the release of the National Social Watch report on institutions of governance a day after the conclusion of the plenary, Urban Development Minister S. Jaipal Reddy referred to the issue of corruption and the growing influence of corporate and industrial lobbies on governance. He pointed out that supporters of the policy of liberalisation, including him, had hoped that it would improve transparency and lessen the influence of black money in society and the polity.
But what we see is that with high growth there is also a furious increase of black money in society and the polity. Unless we are able to curb this, one cannot hope to root out corruption. Incidentally, Jaipal Reddy is the first and perhaps the only Union Minister to have openly welcomed Sonia Gandhi's call to shed the discretionary powers of Ministers, especially in land allotment.
There is broad consensus in the party that the scale and depth of corruption has increased under UPA-II, which came into office in 2009 with a sound electoral performance. Within six months of the government taking office, at least half a dozen Ministers were facing charges of either corruption or impropriety. This is indeed a cause for concern. Along with this, we also have a situation where Congress and other UPA Ministers are engaged in a running battle with one another on a variety of issues. The Ministers of Industry and Civil Aviation are in constant battle with the Minister for Environment, and the Ministry of Steel and the Ministry of Mines do not see eye to eye on many issues. Clearly, the government is marked by a lack of cohesion, the leader from Uttar Pradesh said.
STATE UNITSIf this is the situation at the level of the Central government, the functioning of various State governments and State party units are worse. Three cases in point are Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. In Andhra Pradesh, it is evident that the party has completely failed to stabilise after the death of Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. The party has already tried out two Chief Ministers in the State, failed to handle the Telangana agitation and created a situation that has made Rajasekhara Reddy's son and Congress Member of Parliament Jaganmohan Reddy quit the party.
In Maharashtra, too, the party has had to appoint and remove Chief Ministers frequently owing to a variety of factors: during its 11-year rule it tried out five Chief Ministers. In Rajasthan, the drift is palpable. There are complaints galore against the State government, ranging from inability to handle the Gujjar agitations to mismanagement of various government schemes, including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).
It is evident that the central leadership is not able to assert itself and bring order. The situation is such that even diktats from the first family of the Congress, generally considered inviolable, are not working in several cases. Jaganmohan Reddy's public defiance in Andhra Pradesh is a striking example of how the leadership is not able to wield the stick effectively. According to party insiders, many regional satraps have taken recourse to a more or less similar line in recent times.
This situation has provided the BJP and its allies in the NDA greater momentum. The NDA got a boost with the sweeping victory of the Janata Dal (United)-BJP combine in the Bihar Assembly elections in November.
The fact that the Congress fared much worse than expected (it won just four seats against nine in the previous Assembly) has added to the demoralisation of the party. Clearly, the Congress can no longer fall back on its famous where is the opposition line, which the UPA-I used to telling effect during its first stint between 2004 and 2009.
NEGATIVE FACTORThis sense of disarray is a crucial negative factor because four major States West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Assam and some minor ones, such as the Union Territory of Puducherry, go to the polls in the first half of 2011, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat later in the year.
A year ago, the UPA would have exuded confidence about sweeping the Assembly elections. Several local factors in these States may help the Congress even now, but the general atmosphere of political and organisational disarray makes its chances of victory difficult. No encouraging answer will be forthcoming if one asks after Burari what? in spite of the inspiring speeches by the main speakers at the plenary.
COMMents
COMMents
SHARE