Cleaved Congress And Granny’s Cookbook
R K Misra
If you want to be loved, you must have the guts to
be hated.This is a salacious irony of present-day politics.As India luxuriates
in the resurrection of the common man-aam aadmi- at the cost of the saffronised elite, there is need to look at the
debris of the deathblow debacle that the Delhi poll results meted out to the Congress.
Just one blow to the BJP and a worried RSS has it’s
leader Mohan Bhagwat hauling his own team over the coals for their inability to
sniff the disaster that was looming .The defeat of the BJP and the deflating of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ego and image may be cause for strategic concern.
But, more than that, what has both shaken and stirred Bhagwat is the inability
of his dependable army of selfless RSS workers, in gauging the alienation on
the ground. They were over 50,000 strong, deployed on ground zero and failed. Why? This is what bothers
Bhagwat. He needs to, if he must protect a legacy and project a perception
built over decades.
So does the Congress, steadily sinking in the
quagmire, yet reluctant to even raise it’s head and look around.
The Narendra Modi led
BJP government may be the butt of jokes
on the social media for it’s inability to deliver development (Vikas) over a
full term pregnancy period-nine months-but the Congress seems stricken enough
to even defer waking up from last year’s defeat induced stupor.
The reasons are not far to seek. And there are
parallels in what was happening in Gujarat and ultimately proved infectious in
the country. It was this prevarication which cost the Congress in Gujarat, led
to the rise of Narendra Modi and ultimately to the fall of the Congress led UPA
government, from both power at the centre and people’s esteem and is now facing
the ignominy of being wiped out of existence in Delhi.
Few would remember when the Congress last came to
power in Gujarat on its own steam. It was a quarter of a century ago. The record
continues to be held by Madhavsinh Solanki who retained power in Gujarat in the
1985 Assembly elections, bagging a record 148 of the total 182 seats only to be
unceremoniously uprooted by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and replaced by
Amarsinh Chaudhary. Solanki was brought back three months before the 1990
Assembly elections but it was too late and the Congress went out of power, to
be replaced by a Janata Party-BJP coalition government in Gujarat. Subsequently,
Patel broke free of both the Janata Party and the BJP restraint to form a
regional party, Janata Dal-Gujarat. This party ultimately merged into the
Congress, bringing the party to power in the state. Congress again held the
reigns of power albeit indirectly when BJP leader Shankersinh Vaghela rebelled
to eject his own party government headed by Keshubhai Patel in 1995.
Vaghela at the head of a regional party formed a
government with Congress support. On both the occasions the Congress came to power in Gujarat through
the backdoor, it was sent cart wheeling out
in the Assembly elections that followed. Its fate remains so to this
day.
A lack of consistency and decisiveness has been the
bane of the Congress in Gujarat. It is the same process, which is proving to be
the undoing of the party at the Centre.
Arjun Modvadia submitted his resignation as Gujarat
Congress chief in 2012 after the debacle
in the Assembly polls but no decision has been taken on it yet. Delhi never
allowed strong regional leaders to flourish. After Shankersinh Vaghela joined
the party, he had created ‘Shaktidal’, a uniformed set up of youth to combat
the BJP cadres. Within a short span, the strength of the dal crossed a
lakh and gave Modi sleepless nights as
it engaged their cadres in shows of strength.
However, the internal machinations, forced Vaghela to disband the dal and the
Congress lost the combative edge.
Rahul Gandhi would need to go no further than his own grandmother for
lessons in reviving the Congress. In
fact ,he began in right earnest when he started rebuilding the moribund Youth Congress
through membership drives and grass root elections. The impact was visible in Gujarat when a predominant
presence of youth began to be seen in public meetings and padyatras but the
experiment seemed to have been abandoned half way through its progress. This
was unlike Indira Gandhi. On many occasions, Indira Gandhi walked straight into
formidable resistance by the old guards led by the likes of Morarji Desai, Nijalingappa
and Atulya Ghosh (the Congress-O or Syndicate Congress) as it came to be known.
Each time she would take on the old guard, she created a new team for the party.
Written off, every time there was a set-back for her, she came riding back to
power after decimating her opponents.
The ejection of the Congress from power in the last General
Elections is seen by many here as a heaven-sent opportunity for Rahul Gandhi. He
should utilize this chance to rebuild the party from scratch, whatever time it takes,
more in keeping with the aspirations of a young India. The need is to take a
leaf out of his grandmother’s political book and get to work. It can’t get any
worse, so no harm in dumping all the old
‘obstructions’ and going back to the drawing board with a new team to
fashion a new party. If you don’t, you perish .
Necessity never made a
good bargain. Those who go out journeying on an ass, cannot come back riding
a horse!
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