An existential crisis for Congress

It’s a telling comment on the state of the Indian National Congress that a four-member committee it appointed in October to devise a strategy to rejuvenate the party has turned out a non-starter because its members couldn’t decide who should head it.
The failure appears grave after the Congress’ rout in Delhi, where it has lost 60 percent of its vote-share since December 2013. It has since again been battered in one Lok Sabha and six assembly by-elections.
The committee’s appointment had raised hopes that it would produce a more honest analysis of the Congress’s recent debacles than the shoddy cover-up job that former defence minister AK Antony routinely does – blaming everyone barring the party’s top leadership.
Meanwhile, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh and former tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo have voiced grave concern at the post-defeat turbulence in the party. Ramesh has rightly said that what the Congress faces isn’t an electoral crisis, but “an existential crisis”: “We are fast losing time… We have lost huge ground. We are no longer a premium product. Congress is now a deep-discount bond…”
This acknowledgment would mark a big step forward if it produces a radical break with the Congress’s ostrich-like refusal to recognise that beneath its descent from 206 Lok Sabha seats to a mere 44 is not a tactical error, communication failure or campaign-related mistake, but its disconnect from the people. It’s bereft of a political strategy or social-group appeal.
Yet, Ramesh attributes the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory to its success in running away with ‘Rahul Gandhi’s platform’: “What [Rahul] stood for is implemented by AAP… The lessons to be learnt are door-to-door campaigning, bringing new faces and a level of empathy with the people, shunning arrogance and the trappings of power, nimble footedness in communication, accessibility and visibility of leadership… We have to be less arrogant …”
Deo demands that the party discuss where the leadership went wrong. He blames “rootless wonders and spineless creepers” for the Congress’s defeat and says things wouldn’t have come to such a pass if Gandhi had “ensured implementation of half the promises made after he became vice-president.” But Deo too appeals to Gandhi and his sister to “emancipate” the Congress from the clutches of those who have taken over the organisation.
This analysis focuses on tactics. It misses the vitally important point that the Congress’ crisis is comprehensive and multi-dimensional: a crisis of ideological identity, a programmatic crisis, a crisis of political mobilisation strategy, an organisational crisis and a leadership crisis. They together get reflected in poor alliance-making, incoherent campaigning, and electoral losses.
The Congress is no longer what it was in its heyday: a multi-class and multi-caste, broadly left-leaning party with an umbrella-like character and roots in mass organisations like trade unions and associations of women, professional groups, etc. Then, many poor people could identify with the Congress because it advocated growth with equity.
Since the 1970s, the party’s old base has splintered with the rise of the middle and low castes (Other Backward Classes) and Dalits. They gravitated towards caste-based regional outfits like the Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Bahujan Samaj Party.
This denuded the Congress of its mass character, and sent it into decline between the late 1980s and the first years of the new century. The Congress returned to national power in 2004, but on a thinner base, without a strong, committed, subaltern constituency.
For the past decade, the Congress has explicitly refashioned itself as a party committed to growth without equity, which pursues neoliberal policies favourable to predatory private capital. The Manmohan Singh dispensation catered to a largely middle/upper-middle class urban constituency, and the rural upper castes, whose support was weak and fickle.
It also tried, feebly, to cultivate sections of the poor through modest rights-based programmes like the Public Distribution System for food, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Education, National Rural Health Mission, etc. Their purpose was to compensate the poor for the deprivations they suffer under neoliberal policies.
Such ‘compensatory neoliberalism’-based programmes have become less and less important; their budgets have been pruned. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in its second term undermined their effects by mounting a huge assault on the rights of the poor to water, forests and land (jal, jangal, zameen) by handing over natural resources and mineral rights to corporations.
This substantially lost the Congress the support of the poor. Instead of trying to regain it, the party turned Rightwards, to the middle class. Here, it competed with the Bharatiya Janata Party in sealing sweetheart deals with Big Business – by diluting environmental regulations and making huge tax concessions. Thus, in December 2013, Rahul Gandhi tried to placate an apex chamber of commerce by boasting that he had sacked an environment minister who delayed clearances.
Cultivating a business-friendly image at the expense of vulnerable people will never help the Congress recover popularity. To regain relevance, it must take up an agenda based on equity, social and ecological justice, and expanded civil, political and economic rights for the underprivileged.
The AAP’s sweep of Delhi proves how compellingly attractive this agenda remains even for the relatively prosperous national capital, whose per capita income is seven times higher than Bihar’s. Indeed, the greatest lesson from Delhi is the crucial importance of a poor-centred coalition, besides grassroots consultation, and mobilisation along the Left’s classic approach.
The Delhi result totally demolishes the half-baked theory that India’s poor have become so ‘aspirational’ – and so convinced of the fairness of existing social arrangements which guarantee justice – that they don’t want subsidies.
Indian society remains hideously unequal, hierarchical and prejudiced against the powerless, and has extremely low social mobility. So affirmative action, income support, affordable healthcare and education, and social security are absolutely imperative. The Congress has forgotten this as it competes with the BJP.
The Congress has got its ideology and policy-thrust all wrong. Correcting this means cleansing the party of its pro-corporate right-wing leaders like Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram, Kamal Nath and others and embracing a Left-leaning programmatic perspective.
It also means democratising the Congress, and freeing it of dependence on one family – no matter how able and charismatic its leadership. As it happens, Rahul is anything but astute or charismatic. He follows a weird election calculus, based on the illusory, arrogant presumption that the Congress is inherently popular and can win elections without alliances in the Hindi heartland.
That’s why he broke the Congress alliance with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and RJD last year, and handed the state on a platter to the BJP. He repeatedly did this in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar too without comprehending the prevalent social dynamics or political equations.
Earlier, Gandhi tried to rebuild the Congress organisation through the rotten instrument of the Youth Congress by holding elections rather nominating office-bearers. Most posts were captured by the children of Congress bandicoots using money power.
There’s no easy way out of the Congress’s crisis. But the party can only be revived and made viable on a left-of-centre platform, the space for which has expanded thanks to the BJP’s recent growth. The Congress would commit a historic blunder by squandering this opportunity.
The writer, a former newspapereditor, is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi.
Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in