Congess on the backfoot

Besides indulging inept and corrupt state governments, the inability of the Congress to act decisively is hurting the party

Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

In September last year, India Today, in its annual beauty contest of best performing states, declared Punjab as the best governed state. At that time our columnist, Mohan Guruswamy, had boldly claimed that the "topper was a fake" and gave reasons as to why Punjab was slipping badly on all human development indices. Although Guruswamy read correctly what was wrong with the Congress rule, the anger welling against Chief Minister Captain Amrinder Singh was not realistically anticipated by the party high command in Delhi. They thought that with a Sikh, Manmohan Singh, as the prime minister, and an aggressive CM pursuing pro-big business policies, the assembly elections would be a cakewalk for the party. Quite clearly, the Congress failed to fathom the wrath of the people against special economic zones, anti-farmer policies, rampant corruption, and back breaking price increases.

A similar story was repeated in Uttarakhand, where the Congress has again been routed. Here, too, the Congress lost because of the debilitating impact of central economic policies on the lives of ordinary people. Besides corruption, people were angry with the rulers in their respective state capitals and the Centre for throwing them to the wolves of the market. As pollsters pointed out repeatedly during the run up to the elections, ordinary people were burdened by rising unemployment and growing poverty. Quite evidently, the much tom-tommed rural employment guarantee scheme, meant to provide jobs to the unemployed, did not improve their lives. Corruption and poor governance resulted in funds from the Centre being aggressively bilked by the venal nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and contractors. According to a recent study, barely Rs 11 out of the Rs 60 they are supposed to get, reach the beneficiaries as daily wages.

These assembly results are likely to deepen the gloom in the Congress party. The results from Punjab and Uttarakhand merely accentuate the trend that has been visible since Lalu Prasad Yadav was defeated in the Bihar elections a year ago. After that, the Congress - led formations have done badly in local elections in Maharashtra and other places. A similar result awaits the party in the forthcoming polls to the Delhi municipality. The Congress managers have been resorting to tired arguments about "anti-incumbency" to rationalise their defeats, but there is something really wrong with the way the party has conducted its affairs since the time it fortuitously got a chance to rule the country again.

And the problems with the Congress are many. They begin with the way power is shared between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Prime Minister Singh does not enjoy political authority even as he holds the highest political office in the country. His misery is exacerbated in the eyes of many of his partymen as he is in the Parliament as a member of the Rajya Sabha. He has no control over the party and there are very few people who listen to him. His cabinet ministers, too, pursue their own agenda and many of them are mired in corrupt practices. The prime minister is aware of their malfeasance but is unable to do anything as they belong to allied parties or are close to the Congress President. His poorly attended meeting in Amritsar, where barely 1,000 people were present (500 were security personnel), points to his growing irrelevance in party politics. Sonia, who enjoys political authority, on the contrary, is cramped by the simple fact that she is not the prime minister and is unable to do many things that would happen if she occupied the high office. Also, she believes in giving autonomy to many of the chief ministers and others in the government — because of her European upbringing that does not sit well with the Indian political reality. Due to this, many CMs who should have been changed in the middle of their term due to their rising unpopularity, managed to carry on with their jobs, thus hurting the prospects of the party.

And so, what is politically important for the Congress party ends up being sacrificed - as it would either ‘undermine the stability’ of the UPA government or hurt the ‘good’ image of the prime minister. A case in point is the manner in which the Congress party dithered over Uttar Pradesh after the Supreme Court announced its verdict against 13 MLAs for defecting to the Samajwadi Party. The Congress President Sonia Gandhi saw it as an opportunity to revive the fortunes of the party even if the step attracted the odium of those who do not like the use of Article 356 of the Constitution. She lobbied hard with the allies to dismiss the UP government which the Supreme Court had declared as being illegally constituted, but found many, amongst her advisors, who warned her to exercise caution as her actions could bring down the central government.

Sonia’s exertions generated a lot of excitement amongst the Congress workers in UP who have been out of power for more than 18 years. They thought that if President’s rule were imposed, they would manage to wrest some control over the turf they have lost to regional parties like the SP and the BSP. After travelling some distance, the central government choked. Leaders like Mohsina Kidwai had said at the CWC meeting that if the Congress president had made up her mind, they should go ahead with the decision and not bother with the consequences. In Lucknow, every one remembered the guts and decisiveness of the late Indira Gandhi who would not have waited so long to throw out the UP chief minister. Even Mulayam Singh Yadav cheekily mentioned Indira Gandhi when it became apparent that Sonia was backtracking.

While the Congress, during the days of Indira Gandhi, was totally different from what it is now, this is no excuse for the party leadership’s inability to act. By failing to dismiss the UP government, the party high command revealed that it does not have the necessary machismo to take on more aggressive players in the political spectrum. "Both the Congress president and the prime minister are too nice to take on the toughies in Uttar Pradesh," claimed a UP Congressman. What this Congress leader was suggesting was that the Congress does not have the will or strategy to revive the party in the state. With the elections beginning from April 11 there is near unanimity that the Congress has ceased to be a factor even before the campaigning has begun. Its attempts to pitchfork Rahul Gandhi as the leader of the party seem to be foundering -- he does not appear to be ready to take on this difficult job. "We would not ask him to lead the party in UP as we have no chances in the state and a heavy defeat would hurt his image," explained a senior minister.

These defeats are likely to cast a long shadow on economic reforms like FDI in retail, SEZs and even the civilian nuclear deal with USA. From now on, the Congress will go slow on anything that is perceived to be pro-business. To stem the rot, the Congress president will be forced to take corrective steps to ensure that the government policies are connected with ordinary people and are not perceived to be meant for just a few.