Congress: Is the Party Withering Away?

NOT LONG AGO, AN AIRLINE HONCHO happened to get a call from Rahul Gandhi. Shortly after the perfunctory exchange of pleasantries, the Congress leader came up with a demand: Can you share with me the caste profile of people who travel on your airline? The corporate hotshot, only too familiar with the eccentricities of politicians, found the query strange and bordering on the frivolous. It left him with a sense of disbelief. His response was that his team never demands informa­tion about the caste of his passengers. Gandhi appeared confused and disconnected the call.

The shock that the airline chief felt mirrors the sentiments of a large section of people, including Congress members. That Rahul Gandhi is confused about organisational matters and inco­herent about political messaging is a grouse most of them, includ­ing those who have closely worked with him over the decades, invariably share in private chats. This glaring shortcoming of the leader—which broadly translates to the failure of his party in gaug­ing the strength of its ideological opponent—has a correlation with the mass exodus of Congress leaders and workers across the coun­try, many of them aver. Notably, the exit of party leaders and work­ers from especially the Northeast followed Rahul Gandhi’s visits as part of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. In Arunachal Pradesh, where the General Election will be held along with the Assembly polls, Congress has been finding it difficult to find candidates to contest from several seats. Again, in Rajasthan, as elsewhere, prominent faces have decided not to contest, making the campaign subdued.

This is not just about bad optics. The inability of those at the top echelons of an emaciated Congress to keep the flock together also has to do with denying access to the majority of the leaders, partymen complain, adding that Gandhi has surrounded himself with political featherweights and leaders who can neither com­municate with the rank and file nor offer sane pieces of advice to their leader. “Congress is caught in multiple jeopardy, most damaging being the absence of leaders with institutional mem­ory and crowd-pulling abilities in the campaign for 2024 and the ineffectiveness of weak leaders who are virtually the gatekeepers of the inner circle,” says a Delhi-based Congress leader on condi­tion of anonymity, reeling out occasions when this individual was unable to share political ideas with the Nehru-Gandhi scion.

The symptoms of largescale atrophy of Congress as a political force is for all to see, but the ailing party has done nothing sub­stantial to revitalise itself through procedures that may work to its advantage, primarily because of its leadership being in denial and living in a world defined by the phantom glory of the past.

Sample this: after he was sacked by Congress, Sanjay Nirupam, who claims he had sent in his resignation letter before he was sus­pended, referred to Congress as “organisationally disturbed” and run by outdated leaders who include Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge, and general secretary KC Venugopal. He alleged, “These leaders… are surround­ed by people who have no connection with the grassroots workers, are extremely arrogant, they clash among each other though they have no political experience, and they speak such things which I could not utter publicly.” He also singled out Venugopal for being a terrible communicator who failed to strike a chord not only with the masses but also within the organisation. “Nobody understands what language Venugopal speaks, whether it is Hindi, English or Malayalam,” said Nirupam, who is a key player in the politically significant state of Maharashtra where some pundits have given Congress, along with its allies, a fighting chance to make a small recovery. The party won only one of the 25 seats it contested in the 2019 General Election.

Besides its skewed priorities—which include emphasis on a caste census that has failed to click even in a caste-obsessed state like Bihar where not a single soul from the upper castes hit the streets in protest against the publication of a state-level caste cen­sus report—the Congress leadership cannot boast of any crowd-puller this time round. First of all, caste census isn’t a hot issue the way it was in the 1990s because the government has stopped being the employer of choice for most people. Their aspirations have changed and so have the rules of engagement in politics.

WITH THE PROBABLE exception of former Mad­hya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh and a few others, most Congress leaders in the fray are lightweights who are no match for the array of leaders that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) possesses. In short, in terms of crowd-pulling prowess, Congress has on its side also-rans com­pared with the titans in the rival camp.

Unlike in the previous General Elections, including the one in 2019, there are hardly any reports of a Congress leader sulking over being denied a ticket, a confirmation of the lack of enthusi­asm and of partymen resigning themselves to the fate that they are, according to widespread perception, losing momentum. Some of the so-called star campaigners of the Grand Old Party are Pawan Khera, Supriya Shrinate, Jairam Ramesh, and others who are known to punch far above their political weight.

The banner of revolt within is too large to be ignored by any standards, but thanks to the top leadership ignoring it, more lead­ers are leaving Congress. For their part, Rahul Gandhi and team take solace in claiming that these leaders are either leaving under pressure from the Central investigative agencies or looking for fresh pastures. “No rational political party can afford to allow so many leaders leaving in hordes that we are seeing now in Congress: first, it was because of the refusal to mend ways as we know from the exit of many leaders from ‘G23’ [Congress MPs who wrote a letter in 2021 asking for stronger leadership and organisational elections, which was ignored]; and then because of lack of recognition and ac­cess to decision-making; and, finally, thanks to lopsided priorities. The ostrich approach, where people pretend not to see problems within, is what the party has been following for far too long. That is the biggest problem with Congress and it has taken the party to an existential crisis now,” says a Congress leader based in South India.

An existential crisis may be staring the party in its face, but the “blissful ignorance and arrogance” is contagious, adds this leader, emphasising that the statements of those who have left lately reflect the rot within.

It is such a reported lack of direction of the inner circle surround­ing Rahul Gandhi that got Gourav Vallabh’s goat. After resigning recently as Congress leader and spokesperson, he said that the manifesto of his former party was prepared by the same person for the last 30 years who has “not even contested the election of a class monitor”. Without naming Jairam Ramesh, he said in an interview to ANI, “When I was in college, he used to defend the party on TV as a spokesperson. Even today, he is in charge of communications [for the party]. He is a PA. Congress is being run by PAs of former Union ministers who have never contested the election of a class monitor.” Within hours of Vallabh joining BJP, former Bihar Congress presi­dent Anil Sharma also joined the saffron party. Several such leaders accused Rahul Gandhi and his core team of incompetence and for letting Congress shrink to only 52 seats in Lok Sabha. Meanwhile, former Congress spokesperson Rohan Gupta also joined BJP in an unexpected move on April 11 and slammed his former party for aligning with the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.

Prior to that, Olympic medallist and boxer Vijender Singh had joined BJP from Congress, stating that it was a well-thought-out move. Earlier, two-time Congress MP from Haryana’s Kuruk­shetra, Naveen Jindal had quit Congress and moved to BJP, which immediately fielded him from the constituency.

The list of such defections from across states is long. In Madhya Pradesh, former Union minister Suresh Pachouri left Congress after nearly five decades of association, and joined BJP. In Gujarat, where Congress has historically won a significant share of votes in polls, its state working president Ambarish Der quit the party last month to join BJP. Although the party had not won a single seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it secured a vote share of 32.11 per cent against BJP’s 62-plus per cent. In the 2022 state elections, Congress managed a vote share of 27.28 per cent. But the out-migration from Congress over the years has been huge in the state. Some of those who had left Congress include Arjun Modhwadia, who had been the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee president and Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader. He has said that running the party cannot be a part-time business. He said in an interview to the Indian Express that “your job is not done by merely addressing a public meeting and criticising Modi”, in an apparent criticism of Rahul Gandhi and his associates. In the western Indian state, Congress legislators Alpesh Thakor and Dhavalsinh Zala had joined BJP earlier. Simi­larly, Hardik Patel, who had led the Patidar agitation for reserva­tions and later became a Congress leader in 2020, joined BJP in 2022.

Following Sushmita Dev’s resignation as president of Con­gress’ women’s wing in 2021 to join the Trinamool Congress, several party leaders had called for introspection. But none of that happened, demoralising more young leaders who quit fol­lowing in the footsteps of those who had left earlier, party insid­ers note. Senior leaders who had left the party include the likes of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, Sunil Jakhar, Amarinder Singh, Milind Deora, RPN Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, and Kiran Kumar Reddy (who quit in 2023 and was the last chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh). Several Congress chief ministers had left the party earlier, too. Apart from those mentioned, they include SM Krishna, Digambar Kamat, Vijay Bahuguna, Pema Khandu, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, and Ravi Naik. The kin of prominent former or late Congress leaders who have left theparty to joinBJPincludeAnilAntony, sonofCongressveteranAKAntony, and Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of late Congress veteran from Kerala, K Karunakaran. They all blamed Rahul Gandhi for their exit. A senior Congress leader from Kerala told Open, “You cannot blame those who exit the party because of ambition and assume that the story is over. In politics, you need to keep your people closer. Most importantly, you have to offer leadership and be seen as support­ive. Being opaque and interacting through intermediaries all the time doesn’t help. All empires fall on their own weight and out of domestic unrest. People within are not openly talking about it; they know that a cabal is controlling Rahul Gandhi and that it is advisers who are either bitter (for whatever reasons), or who have no ear to the ground, who influence Rahul to express puerile ideas and be a bleeding heart without a cause.”

Strong words, indeed.

Some analysts believe that launching personal attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proved to be disastrous for Congress. Instagrammable shorts and stories alone cannot woo the new voter who has high aspirations. Efforts to delegitimise elections and bank on extreme grievances are not bound to attract voters in an India where BJP has been able to successfully capture the public imagination with its schemes and slogans, whether one likes it or not. A shallow understanding of the political cultures of individual states is also hurting Congress, notwithstanding Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra passing through many regions. A section of Delhi-based Congress leaders feels that it was, in hindsight, unwise to have tied up in a seat-sharing pact with AAP. With Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in jail, it looks like a lost opportunity for Congress to have campaigned against corruption by AAP and made some gains in the polls.

Congress, which had a high strike rate till the mid-1980s and re­mained a significant power till 2014, has seen its fortunes dwindle since Modi’s rise to power. Apart from other states and the names already mentioned, in Uttarakhand, Congress’ three-time MLA from Badrinath, Rajendra Singh Bhandari, recently joined BJP, shortly after Congress leader Manish Khanduri, son of former Chief Minister BC Khanduri, entered the saffron fold. In Punjab, too, Patiala MP Preneet Kaur, former Union minister and wife of former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, joined BJP. In Rajasthan, former Congress MLA Ramlal Meghwal is now in BJP. Congress’ national secretary and co-in-charge of Bihar, Ajay Kapoor, joined BJP on March 13. Padmakar Valvi, Congress leader and former minister, also left his party on the same day. Congress legislature party leader in Arunachal Pradesh, Lombo Tayeng, joined the ruling BJP on March 4, ahead of Assembly polls and the General Election. The sole Congress MP in Jharkhand, Geeta Koda, has also joined the party leading the coalition in power at the Centre.

Confined now to being a marginal force in several states and a pale shadow of what it was nationally, Congress isn’t showing signs yet that it is ready to learn from its mistakes. While people who have benefited from the previous dispensations led by Congress are nostalgic about a so-called glorious past, most others are not immensely pleased with its record and are unhurt by the party’s fading electoral prospects. What adds to the anguish of the opposi­tion is Congress’ insistence on playing the pole position apart from its manifesto that doesn’t seem to factor in the aspirations of a large section of Indians. The ruling combine, however, has the strength of having fought and won legal battles for most of its policies.

Further, many voters are unlikely to be impressed by Congress’ apparent efforts to warm up to the minorities as a special category given the narratives that currently dominate India. The latest Con­gress manifesto says: “We will respect and uphold the fundamental right to practise one’s faith and the rights guaranteed to religious minorities under Articles 15, 16, 25, 26, 28, 29 and 30 of the Consti­tution.” It adds, “We will encourage and assist students and youth belonging to the minorities to take full advantage of the growing opportunities in education, employment, business, services, sports, arts and other fields.” It also says, “We will restore the Maulana Azad Scholarships for study abroad and increase the number of scholar­ships.” The manifesto goes on to offer what is seen by some poll analysts as platitudes: the economic empowerment of minorities is a necessary step for India to realise its full potential. “We will ensure that banks will provide institutional credit to minorities without discrimination,” it says, adding, “We will ensure that the minorities receive their fair share of opportunities in education, healthcare, public employment, public works contracts, skill development, sports and cultural activities without discrimination.” Congress also promises in its manifesto that the party, if it comes to power, will ensure that, like every citizen, minorities have the freedom of choice of dress, food, language and personal laws.

“I feel all this is a contrived outreach to the minorities,” says the Delhi-based Congress leader.

The absence of crowd-pullers compounded by organisational distress will add to the trauma of the beleaguered Congress as it braces for the seven-phased General Election where it is fighting an existential battle.

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