Populism to Rahul's magic: Six impossible things Congress still believes in

There is an uncanny resemblance between the Congress and the Queen inhabiting Lewis Carroll’s delightful fantasy Through the Looking Glass. The fictional character had claimed that she believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

The Congress seems to pretty much do the same — whether it is before breakfast, after lunch or post dinner. Notwithstanding the shock treatment it got in the 2014 Lok Sabha, in its first 100 days in the opposition the party continues to believe in half a dozen impossible things.

Take a look:

The Rahul magic

The biggest impossible most Congress leaders, starting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi herself, believe in is that party vice president Rahul Gandhi is a leader, a crowd-puller and a vote-catcher who only has to wait for the tide to turn to wave his magic wand and the Congress would be back on its feet sprinting to glory.

Ever since Rahul entered active politics, he has failed to inspire, lead or win votes for the party. Barring a stray victory in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in UP where the Congress won 21 seats and began dreaming of recapturing the Hindi heartland, Rahul has given them nothing to cheer about. It has been one long list of failures in assembly polls, including the wipeout in Delhi, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, and the near decimation in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in which Rahul was the star campaigner.

Yet each time Rahul failed he was feted — in less than 10 years from a new MP he was elevated as general secretary and party vice president, with a ministerial berth and even the PM’s post for his asking. Had the Congress not performed so disastrously in 2014, Sonia could well have passed on her mantle to him during the organisational elections expected in early 2015. But with things as they are, even Sonia would hesitate to crown him party chief without raising a storm notwithstanding the belief that only a Gandhi—no matter how insipid—can hold the party together.

People have no option but to vote the party back

This is a theory most Congress leaders live and swear by: people have voted it out of power and they will vote it back in. And the party does not have to do anything. It’s as simple as that.

Indeed, when he was in the party, if he was ever asked why the Congress lost an election, Pranab Mukherjee, now President, would snap back: “Because the people didn’t vote for us.” That quote however was reserved for the prying media. In-house, of course, the party turned to him to identify the factors behind the defeat and suggest ways to recover. And if he was not available, the task was entrusted to another veteran AK Antony who, true to form, has this time blamed every factor other than the top leadership for the debacle.

Antony submitted his report to Sonia more than a fortnight back — and nearly two and half months after the 16 May results left the party red faced with only 44 seats. But there has been no follow up action, no brainstorming session, no large-scale organizational revamp. All that one hears is a deafening silence, with Rahul, after a brief spurt of action play in Parliament, neither seen nor heard. Sonia has lashed out at the new government over rise in prices and communal clashes, but has yet to take any action to recharge the organisation.

Indeed, there are now fears that after the RJD-JD(U)-Congress combine won six of the 10 by-elections in Bihar as against four to the BJP, the Congress would start day dreaming that the ground situation has started improving for it and other anti-BJP forces. “If the Congress starts believing in this, the chances of a brainstorming session may further recede,” said a Congress ally.

But it will have no option but to introspect and at if it gets another shock in the 13 September by-polls for 11 seats in Uttar Pradesh and the assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir where it is fighting with its back to the wall.

Congress remains the central pole in politics

This is an illusion the 129-year-old ‘national’ party continues to entertain even though it lies in the ICU with only 44 seats — 11 short to claim the position of leader of opposition. It could not open its account in 19 states and UTs and its vote share dipped alarmingly below the 20% mark which, in effect, means that only one in every five voters voted for the Congress, thereby making any recovery a herculean task. The party does not have a solid vote base to call its own and its image, appeal and credibility have taken a severe beating. The message is clear that the single largest opposition in Parliament has been relegated to the margins and will have to reinvent itself if it has to stage a comeback. But it continues to believe that it is central to Indian politics, dismissing the emergence of the BJP and Modi as a short-lived phenomenon. Unused to being treated at par with other opposition parties, the Congress has demanded the LoP position from Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and when denied is now looking with hope at the judiciary which has underlined that the LoP is an important component under the Lokpal law.

The dynasty is the solution of all problems

Even thinking of living without the dynasty is blasphemy in the Congress. For years, its workers have revolved around the family tree, living off the Gandhi-Nehru name when the going is good and expecting them to revive the party when the chips are down as had happened after Indira Gandhi lost in 1977 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1989. The experiment with a non-Gandhi under PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri created fissures so much so that after the electoral setback in 1996, the Congress began to plead with Sonia Gandhi to enter politics and revive the party. And when she did, a section led by Sharad Pawar split over her foreign origins but this failed to damage the party. Indeed, Sonia went on to lead the party to victory in 2004 and with the help of Manmohan Singh and Rahul in 2009.

The debacle of 2014 has shaken the workers’ faith in Rahul but not in Sonia — or for that matter in Priyanka. With Sonia stepping back because of her health and age and Rahul failing to meet expectations, despairing Congressmen are yearning for a charismatic figure like Priyanka who managed to steal the headlines from Modi in the 2014 campaign. Although their preference is for a party led by Priyanka-Sonia-Rahul in that order, they live by the Congress axiom that any Gandhi is better than no Gandhi. “A Gandhi, no matter which one, is a uniting and cementing force. Without a Gandhi, the party would splinter and fall apart,” said a leader.

Populism can substitute governance

Indira Gandhi gave the populist slogan of ‘garibi hatao’ but she also hailed for nationalising banks, abolishing privy purses, liberating Bangladesh and conducting nuclear tests. She was however assassinated for Operation Bluestar.

In UPA-I, there was some sort of synergy between populism and governance with the Manmohan Singh government pushed by Sonia to go for pro-people measures the like farm loan waiver scheme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Right to Information which paid political and electoral dividends in 2009. But in UPA-2, the passage of the Food Security Act, the Lokpal law or the direct benefit transfer scheme could not cover up the misgovernance, price rise and allegations of corruption.

The rules of the game had changed but the party continued to believe that announcing populist measures can substitute governance.

Digvijaya Singh, Jairam and their ilk will keep quiet

Articulate but voluble, nothing can keep the irrepressible Digvijaya Singh down, not even the party’s gag orders, with some of this recent statements reflecting poorly on the Amethi MP he was once considered close to. His comments like Rahul does not have the temperament of a ruler and his silence on critical issues had contributed to the party’s loss in the “war of perception” in 2014 are interpreted as a direct indictment of the leader. And in an ironical twist, Janardhan Dwivedi, the man who would issue gag orders on others, is himself airing his “personal views” to add to the prevailing confusion in the party.

Post debacle, Dwivedi said the party must listen and not just issue orders and that septuagenarians should make way for young leaders. Though he was among the first to call for Rahul’s entry in politics in 2004, his controversial comments in the middle of the 2014 elections did more harm than good: he wanted an end to caste based reservations and urged Rahul to go for quotas for the financially weaker sections; and at the fag end of an uneven Rahul-Modi campaign, he disclosed that the late Rajiv Gandhi had appreciated Priyanka’s “political understanding” way back in 1990.

Like them, Jairam Ramesh too has his fair share of controversies as, for instance, his reported advice to the Amethi MP to apologise to the Muslims for saying that the ISI was in touch with Muslim youths affected by the Muzaffarnagar riots or for asserting that Priyanka was more charismatic but Rahul was the Congress leader.

Even though Rahul’s latest blue eyed boy Madhusudan Mistry has disapproved the public airing of views by those “who had access to the Congress president and vice president and could express their concern to them without fear and were part of the decision- making process,” leaders admit that it is virtually impossible to get any of them to keep quiet. While the party has acted against lesser leaders who have ridiculed Rahul as a “joker,” it clearly does not know how to handle its stalwarts. And if things continue as they do, there would be more Digvijayas, Dwivedis, Jairams and their ilk ready with their sound bytes.