Any Delay in Taking a Final Call ..... Power & Politics /The Sunday Standard/ March 01, 2015

Any Delay in Taking a Final Call will Make or Mar Gandhi Parivar and Congress Party

Dear Soniaji,

This is an open letter written with an open mind for an open mind. Everyone is fully aware that the Gandhi Parivar is passing through testing times. For a party, triumphs and defeat are cyclical. You win some, you lose some. But over the past few months, the winning record of the Congress has been abysmal. It is perceived as a family-owned outfit passing through an agonising rhythm of fluctuating fortunes. The absence of your party’s vice-president Rahul Gandhi—who also happens to be your son—from the cloak and dagger drama of the capital’s politics must be painful. Undoubtedly, he has the right to take a break from gruelling political acrobatics and spend quality time on aerobics with nature at an undisclosed, sylvan spot. Rahul is known for his frugal habits and obsession with health gadgets. But even his staunchest admirers feel that his sabbatical is not only badly-timed but is also bad news for the much-mauled party. I’m sure he would have taken your permission, and as the Congress President, you would have reluctantly given it so that he can reflect on the present and ponder over his past actions which led to the total rout of the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and in the recent Delhi Assembly elections. While Rahul is engaged in vipasanna and introspection, you are confined to 10 Janpath to plan a strategy for a rejuvenated Rahul when he returns home next week. Will you pass on the baton to him, yielding to his conditions? Or will you carry on with the old leadership? The party is waiting impatiently for an answer.

Now the Congress has reached a terminal stage where any call taken by you can either remake it or let it die a natural death. The party is at war with itself. Various leaders are speaking in different voices. It is not a new experience for you. Whenever your party suffers a massive defeat, a section of its leadership gets impatient and seeks a scapegoat. They also find excuses to desert. It happened in 1969, 1989 and 1995. While individuals vanished, the party survived due to sudden rise of another Gandhi. Indira Gandhi survived the Syndicate’s machinations and created a new Indira Congress. In 1977, when the Congress lost the General Elections, many stalwarts left Indira and her son Sanjay Gandhi to fight the might of Janata Party government. Both of them took to the streets. Indira was sent to jail and Sanjay faced a lathi-charge. The Congress was back in power 30 months later.

In the early Nineties, your loyalists saw you as the password to victory. They first ejected Narasimha Rao and then Sitaram Kesari, and installed you as the Congress president. The party lost the first election fought under you in 1999. But you didn’t feel tired or wanted to retire. Instead, you brought many Congressmen who had once humiliated you back into the party fold. You decided to compromise on your Gandhian-Nehruvian ego and forge strategic alliances with your political foes. In 2004, the party threw the Shining India campaign into darkness and was back in Raisina Hill. Five years later, it won 206 seats, more than your late husband Rajiv Gandhi’s tally in 1989.

In 2004, you decided to politically baptise Rahul. Your intent was clear. Once you retired, the Congress couldn’t be left in the hands of any non-Gandhi. You were clear that the party needed a new face with a new message for the future. Rahul was projected as Mr Clean with a modern mind. He would build a party for the future, minus ideological baggage. In the past decade, however, he hasn’t shown any inclination to reinvent the party. Even Congress workers are confused about his philosophy and mission. He is seen as a young man without a mantra. On the other hand, if senior Congress leaders hold the reins, Rahul will be just a titular head without power. Like an obedient son, he stayed away from taking decisions on issues in your domain. The state of the party today is like a royal regime in which son differs with but would never defy his monarch-parent. The palace tremors, however, are being felt in the entire party, which feels that you both have diminished the party beyond redemption. Some feel that it is vertically divided between a small and young Rahul Congress and a top-heavy jaded Sonia Congress. The only positive factor in this factionalism is that your authority is acceptable to all. A battle, however, is raging between those who are unwilling to give up their perches and those who want to take over because their future lies in the success and survival of the 129-year-old party. Rahul has definitely failed to enthuse workers and voters. His unorthodox campaign style and vanishing tricks have raised questions about his ability to lead and keep the party together. While the sell-by date of the Congress is over, the idea of the Congress survives. You will find a person carrying a Congress flag in almost every Indian village. But you will hardly find a credible leader in more than 70 per cent of the over 600 districts of India. The Congress exists nationally, but has vanished locally. It is time for you take the final call. You can either follow the tried and tested Indian tradition of handing over the business to the heir and spending a peaceful life thereafter, or you can take charge once again, discharging your son of all political responsibilities. Any delay will make both the Gandhi Parivar and the Congress party irrelevant.

prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com Follow me on Twitter @PrabhuChawla

Time Has Come for Gandhi Family ...... Power & Politics /The Sunday Standard/ July 06, 2014

Time Has Come for Gandhi Family to Prove That it is Still a Powerful Brand

The litmus test of a leader lies in his or her ability to pull to safety followers who are teetering on the precipice of defeat and despair. Both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul have been put to this test. It was under Sonia’s leadership that the Congress won the elections twice after Indira Gandhi. It was under her that Congress broke Rajiv Gandhi’s record of winning minimum number of 200 seats in 1989. And it was under Sonia’s leadership again that the 125-year-old party suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat this year. With just 44 seats in its kitty, this is the first time since Independence that the Congress can’t even claim the status of Leader of the Opposition (LoP). The deserted Congress headquarters at 24 Akbar Road and the unemployed status of former ministers and key functionaries reflect the impotent state of the party that ruled the nation for almost six decades. 

"The Congress leadership needs an effective and innovative marketing team, on the line of Narendra Modi’s, to repackage and sell their product. Unfortunately, their mood doesn’t reflect either the urgency or the inclination to recapture the lost market or glitter."

And yet, the leaders are not making any effort to get back to the basics and connect with the common man who felt betrayed by their 10-year misrule and non-governance. Instead, they seem to think that acquiring the LoP label will help revive the party, and the perks and paraphernalia of office will suffuse them with an aura that will influence voters. If that was the case, over 70 per cent of the old ministers wouldn’t have lost the elections. But they don’t seem to realise that. Instead of learning from the ignominious rout, they are still seeking out comfort zones. For the past two weeks, top party leaders have been lobbying, begging and even prostrating themselves in front of the ruling party leaders for the LoP and deputy LoP post. Why? So that they can get a room, a flagged car and over a dozen officials as personal staff.

According to convention, a party needs a minimum of 55 members to support its claim for the LoP’s office. The Congress doesn’t have the numbers, but is demanding the position on the basis of it being the second-largest party in the House after the 282-member BJP. The party has collected endorsements for its demand from both current and former allies. But the Lok Sabha Speaker is not bound by such support coming through press statements. The Congress seems to be so disorganised that it didn’t even occur to them to call a joint meeting of UPA allies and elect one of them as leader. The combined strength of the UPA is about 60 MPs and they fought the election as one group; their leader could easily have got the post of the LoP. But effective communication isn’t the virtue of the Congress; indeed, all its leaders work and walk in different directions.

The Congress’s avaricious politics of grabbing office at any cost has left its local leaders and cadres confused and directionless. All of them look to the Gandhis as the saviours of the party. After the humiliating defeat, Rahul ducked out of view but Sonia started meeting leaders to get direct feedback from those who had lost the elections. So far, she has met over 4,000 people. But the outcome of the long confabulations has shocked many party leaders. Because Sonia has once again chosen the saintly and god-fearing A K Antony to review the causes for defeat and send her a report with his recommendations. Now, Antony has conducted similar assignments in the past as well, but his reports, if there are any, appear to be confined to inaccessible archives of the AICC headquarters. The reports are never read, and hence the question of axing the culprits doesn’t arise. And the liabilities continue lording over the party.

On the face of it, Sonia appears to be serious about taking harsh measures and replacing the dead wood in the party with younger and committed leaders from the states. For the past two decades, the Congress has been controlled by people who have failed in their own states and have limited mass appeal. But it’s Sonia’s own core team that impedes any major overhaul of the party. They are all experts at destabilising strong local leaders and protecting inefficient ones. For example, for over three weeks after the electoral debacle, three Chief Ministers—Bhupinder Singh Hooda of Haryana, Prithviraj Chavan of Maharashtra and Tarun Gogoi of Assam—were kept dangling and threatened with the possibility of losing their posts. Senior leaders were sent to Maharashtra and Assam to gauge the situation, but no action was taken on their reports. Hooda, who had done better in terms of votes polled than the other chief ministers, was destabilised because of factional fights.

Ironically, the Gandhis have been trapped in solving factional fights rather than chalking out any strategy to win elections in the six states of Delhi, Maharashtra, Assam, Jharkhand, Haryana and J&K. Barring some doling out of freebies and reservations on caste and religious grounds, the party hasn’t done anything to win in any of the states ruled by the Congress or its allies. The Gandhis have not even given any attention to the growing tension with its allies in Maharashtra, J&K and Jharkhand. Though the first of the elections is just four months away, party leaders are still fighting each other instead of alongside each other. Some loyalists have asked Sonia and Rahul to take full charge of the organisation. They’ve told them that the Congress without the Gandhis is like a jet without fuel.

If the truth be told, it’s not just the fate of the Congress that is at risk; the very survival of both Sonia and Rahul lies in their capability to put their party on the victory stand again. A party packed with pygmies and sycophants may pose no threat to the Gandhis, but it can’t propel them forward either. The time has come for the family to prove that it is still a powerful, marketable brand. For this, the leadership needs an effective and innovative marketing team, on the line of Narendra Modi’s, to repackage and sell their product. Unfortunately, their mood doesn’t reflect either the urgency or the inclination to recapture the lost market or glitter. They seem to be content dreaming about a scenario where the promise of ‘Achche Din’ has evaporated. But “a dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work”.

prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com; Follow me  on Twitter @PrabhuChawla