Revival on cards, here are 5 questions that Rahul must ask Cong seniors

New Delhi: Post the assembly elections, the Congress high command may finally bite the bullet and set afoot a major organisational revamp carrying a strong Rahul Gandhi imprint all over. If sources in the party are to be believed, deadwood in the organisation would be either chopped off or kicked upstairs as margdrashaks along the lines of the BJP and fresh blood would be inducted to rejuvenate the anaemic party. The party’s highest decision-making body, the Congress Working Committee, would be entrusted with overseeing the generational shift.

However, with too many seniors kicking and screaming, the transition will not be a smooth affair. Even party president Sonia Gandhi may be sympathetic to the seniors. The challenge would prove critical for Rahul. He has to take it head on or continue to sink along with the party. Given the precarious state of the party, a few questions from him to the seniors will be in order:

Loyalty fine, but what value do you bring to the party? The question could be put like this in simple words: Can you win an election? Not every leader in the party is required to contest and win elections. But the hard fact before the Congress is that most of its senior leaders are cut off from the masses. Worse, they have no link with the grassroots level workers in the organiation. They have managed to find important slots in a party that has gradually taken shape of a massive bureaucratic set-up. Their presence and experience add no value to the party. They only block the promotion of the more deserving to higher ranks. Their only claim to their positions is loyalty to the party president, and the fact that they stood by her in tough times. Rahul needs to begin with some plain-speak with this lot.

Are you fit enough for the hard grind the party demands? Whether any particular group likes it or not, Janardan Dwivedi’s call for review of those holding active party positions does merit a discussion. Most of their senior leaders are over 65 years old, even the likes of Jairam Ramesh and BK Hariprasad, who are considered relatively younger, are now touching the 60 years mark. As Firstpost reported earlier, every three out of four members in the Congress Working Committee (CWC) are over 65 years old; leadership has to ease out some of the seniors into advisory roles, while handing over the baton to second rung leaders to do the running around and prove their worth to the high command. The party needs to do a lot of hard work on the ground and it requires people who are mentally and physically agile. This will also help in inculcating healthy rivalry among leaders, which in turn will help the party’s fortunes across the country. The seniors can help analyze the ground situation reports, the synergy can prove to be a potent force in revitalizing the party’s agenda.

Can you stop infighting and promoting factionalism? This may be a malaise with every political party in the country, but the Congress suffers the most from it. It has been losing state after state because of rampant factionalism. Each faction has its leader who in turn has someone’s backing at the top. Senior Congress leaders are known for engineering the defeat of their party candidates to undercut their rivals in the state and national units. The severity of the problem had forced Rahul to get in direct contact with grassroots workers during the previous round of assembly elections. It didn’t help; the Congress had a disastrous outing. Selection of candidates for different elections is also blighted by factional consideration. This has been one of the major reasons why the party has been coming up with poor showing in states where it should be doing well. The Madhya Pradesh state unit is divided in at least five factions, the same is the case with Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and party units in several other big states. The loyalty of the leaders at the lower middle level is for the bigger factional satraps not for the party per se. An elaborate system of loyalty and patronage has got entrenched in the Grand Old Party. Can Rahul break the system?

Can you keep mum? Ever since the party was routed to just 44 seats from the 206 it had in the last Lok Sabha, all leaders have been trying to trump one another in the public eye. Be it the seniors who have spoken out on what went wrong in the run up to the 2014 election campaign to suggestions of “retirement” age, all are being made in public. The younger lot went even a step further by going public with how seniors shouldn’t go public with their comments. It would do a world of good to the party if these matters could be discussed amongst themselves with the high command. It is better to write letters to the high command rather than leak them to the press. In the run-up to the general elections, senior leaders such Mani Shankar Aiyar, Digvijaya Singh and Beni Prasad Varma had been uttering remarks which showed the party in embarrassing light. There seemed to be no control over them and they didn’t seem to be guided by the party line. The trend has not stopped. Rahul will do well to stop leaders from making random remarks. If in confusion, he should take a cue from Narendra Modi.

Are you ready to make a sacrifice for the party? Given the current political scenario, this is perhaps what the party needs most from its leaders. Though the party never misses an opportunity to talk about sacrifices made by their leaders, other leaders need to start leading by example. Leaders need to identify core areas where the party had ceded major ground to others, especially the BJP and invest time and energy in those areas. That would require a lot of fieldwork and spending time amongst the masses to regain their pulse. Ten years of UPA rule had them in a commanding position, but now the tables have turned. One such example is former Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who quickly resigned from the chair and is now directly handling the party’s organization. Being in power tends to brush all small problems under the carpet, but the only way forward is by correcting them before it’s too late. Leaders should be willing to make way for newer faces rather than maintaining status quo, it should be done objectively rather than as a norm.