India’s main opposition party, Congress, was defeated in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's Parliament, in 2014, making way for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to assume power. By 2018, it was in partial revival mode. The party managed to unseat BJP’s long-serving governments in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in 2018. But the power struggle within the party persisted in two states with two young leaders – Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh and Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan, making their choices known.
While Scindia quit Congress and toppled the party's government, headed by Kamal Nath, in Madhya Pradesh, the pressure tactics by Pilot did not succeed in Rajasthan, as he could not muster enough support. The Congress leadership, however, decided to strip the defiant Deputy Chief, who was also the Chief of the party’s state unit of both the positions.
“The young brigade in Congress is too ambitious, they are all second generation, third generation dynasts compared to Congress in Kerala. Congress workers at the age of 42-43 years like Sachin Pilot find it very difficult, even to become a state general secretary or get nominated for an assembly seat. All those people like Jiten Prasad, Milind Deora, because of their political legacy or proximity to the Nehru-Gandhi family, they got it in platter,” commented Rasheed Kidwai, author and political commentator.
Kidwai, who documented the modern history of Congress in his books ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia – A Biography’ said Congress now faces not a singular problem, but multiple problems and leadership was one of them. He said for the first time since independence, there is a “crisis of confidence” within Congress.
There was a time when it was thought Congress was going to disintegrate after successful electoral defeats. “But it bounced back and the back-to-back history of 2004 and 2009 was quite significant,” said Kidwai.
On Rahul Gandhi’s leadership in the party, Kidwai said “Rahul has been an utter failure because he is trying to do things that persons can do only from a position of strength, not from a position of weakness. Unlike religion, where loyalty is absolute, political loyalty is conditional – it is transactional, you do something for me, I do something for you. The moment that bond breaks, there is chaos.”
Kidwai commented that the top slot of leaders in Congress were formally reserved for members of the Nehru-Gandhi family (descendants of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru) . But down the line, they have not democratised the positions, but extended patronage, which “leads to disquiet and bad blood.”
“The future of Congress is extremely bleak; simply because Congressmen themselves don’t want to ....they are allergic to change. If they ask the right questions in the party, there would be some pressure on Rahul and Sonia to reform Congress and change their work-styles. They have been kept in too much comfort,” commented Kidwai.
“Congress has reached the bottom of the barrel at the moment. It has been losing leaders left, right and centre, particularly those who have been considered critical or not close to the family. This definitely shows the inability of the family to be able to keep its flock together; a failure to resolve internal problems within the Congress,” Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said, summing up the state of India’s main opposition, which had ruled the country for almost 55 years since it gained freedom from British colonial rule in 1947.
Mukhopadhyay, author and political commentator, said the main failure of Congress leadership currently is lack of communication with the rank and file, and it has not been able to resolve differences within different interest groups in the party.
“The challenge for any party leader, whether of Congress or any other party, is to constantly ensure that the rival factions come to some kind of an agreement and share the spoils together with mutual respect and agree with each other, yet while retaining their factional identity,” he said.
Mukhopadhyay squarely blamed Rahul Gandhi, the former Chief of Congress party, for his management of the party affairs.
“Rahul Gandhi made the cardinal mistake of dumping the old guard and thought he could manage everything with youngsters. The point is that the youngsters are essentially part of the Delhi-centric politics,” suggested Mukhopadhyay
Both Kidwai and Mukhopadhyay agreed that Sonia Gandhi managed the party well during her first stint as chief of the party, but has been disoriented in her present capacity as interim chief.
“It is unfair to say, there was no effective leader after Indira Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi was a grand success, it is an extraordinary story,” said Kidwai.
“All said and done, Sonia Gandhi managed 10 years of the UPA government, except take out the last three years – seven years she did it quite admirably. She managed the party when there was an impatient young brigade and a rather reticent Manmohan Singh (then Prime Minister),” commented Mukhopadhyay.
The Congress which had bagged 404 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of Indian Parliament in 1984, has been reduced to just 52 seats during the national elections in 2019. It rules in only three states – Punjab, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh independently, while in three others it is part of ruling coalitions.
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