ENARADA, New Delhi
By AJAY N JHA
Post-election introspection sessions in the Congress are generally excuse-finding exercises. These end up finding no grave flaws in poll strategy, cadre mobilization or the conduct of the thick middle-tier of leadership. Of course, the top leadership is shielded from all criticism. It in turn makes stern promise of drastic action to turn things around. The party’s reaction is following the script this time too. But the same kind of exercise about introspection and soul searching is unlikely to yield anything substantial.
What would have jolted the Congress Vice-president all the more is the number of seats which the Congress party could get in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan. Delhi was the worst where the Congress could not even get into double digits while it folded up with just 21 seat in a house of 200. Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dixit lost her own seat while more than 13 Ministers in Ashok Gehlot government got royal drubbing by more than 20000 votes.
In Madhya Pradesh the party had no reason to perform as poorly as it did. It had quelled the factional trouble, found a new leader and the list of candidates had some freshness. It had launched the campaign with some aggression targeting the BJP government’s weakest spot: corruption.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan was popular but his ministers and MLAs had shrunk low in public estimation. The Congress strategy to launch an attack here was spot on too. It was expected, not to win the election but secure at least 20 seats more. But despite all the advantages it collapsed. But then, who is going to bell the cat now?
Would the Congress Vice-president have the guts to examine and inquire about the big loss in Jhabua for the first time in last 50 years and considerable loss of seats in Guna and Gwalior also?
Would he try to know as to how Digvijaya Singh’s son Rajvardhan Singh won by a margin of over 59000 votes while congress candidates failed miserably in all the adjoining assembly segments.?
Would he dare to inquire as to how Suresh Pachauri and all his associates were systematically decimated for the second time?
In Chhattisgarh, almost the entire top brass was finished off in a deadly Maoist attack earlier this year. Yet the party was not even able to create a ripple of sympathy for itself across the state for itself. Raman Singh’s government suffered the same handicaps as Shivraj’s. The leader was popular, but MLAs and ministers were poor performers, and there were several corruption charges against them. However, the Congress failed to wrest the advantage.
The Congress party did well in the first phase as it won 8 out of the total of 12 seats in Bastar region and yet it fell through in the second round. Did Charan Das Mahant pay for the machinations of Digvijaya Singh in his fight against Ajit Jogi?
Would Rahul Gandhi like to inquire as to how senior leaders like Rabindra Choubey and a few others including Amitesh Shukla( shayama Charan Shukla’s son) lost elections and how Charan Das Mahant became a victim of political rivalry between Ajit Jogi and Digvijaya Singh ?
In Rajasthan, there were clear signs that the Gehlot government would go, but nobody anticipated that it would end up with 21 seats out of 200. The ticket selection criterion left both Jats and Bramhins besmirched and lack of coordination between imposition of Dr CP Joshi, Bhanwar Jitendra Singh and Sachin pilot messed thing further.
Probably senior Congress leader is bold enough to tell Rahul Gandhi that the party organization has collapsed across the country – the scale of the defeat across the country suggests so. It is difficult to believe that he is not smart enough to realize it even after such disastrous performances year after year. Is it that he was shown by his advisors what they wanted him to see and believe?
There’s virtually no connect between the grassroots workers and the people at large between the workers and the local leadership and between the latter and the higher intermediate leadership in the state. State-level leaders as well as factional heads, are busy protecting their interests through an elaborate system of patronage and loyalty.
Take the case of Digvijaya Singh for instance. The Congress in Madhya Pradesh is still identified with the scandalous ten years of Digvijaya at the helm before 2003. In fact, during the election campaign Shivraj Singh Chouhan made it a point to ask people to compare the BJP’s ten years in power with that of Digvijaya’s. Manipulative and unreliable, the latter is clearly among the most disliked persons among the party cadre. Yet till not so long ago he controlled the majority of Congress factions and had a larger-than-life presence in the party.
After Jyotiraditya Scindia’s arrival as the campaign committee chief of the party his wings are clipped. But many in the party would say it took too long for the party to cut him to size. Now, he has cleverly discovered a new role for himself as the cheerleader of Rahul Gandhi and as his unofficial spokesperson. The middle level of the party’s hierarchy is full of people like him.
The biggest question begging a credible answer now is would Rahul Gandhi be bold enough to show the likes of Digvijaya the door? If he does so it would be the first major step towards addressing organizational anomalies. It is at the middle level the party needs to initiate drastic steps. Someone must tell him that leaders are only as good as the organization.
There would be no Narendra Modi without an efficient organization converting his personal appeal into votes through smart ground-level mobilization. Likewise, Rahul won’t be such a disaster if he had a fighting-fit organization backing him up. In fact, both are mutual dependent. Yes, he is bringing in changes in the organization and since the Congress is a massive party and the rot runs too deep, the results would take time to show up. But does he recognize the real trouble spots?
Why have not we seen any bold action from him against errant party leaders? If he is serious about introspection, he should do it alone, not among people who are the reason of the party’s downfall.
Would Rahul Gandhi be bold enough to realize that prescription and proforma format exponents in NGO style like Madhusudan Mistry, rootless wonders like Mohan Prakash and BK Hari Prasad have outlived their utility as AICC general Secretaries as seen in their disastrous performance in Gujarat, Chhattishgarh, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere ?
Would Rahul Gandhi be magnanimous enough to realize that elections are not won merely through lap-tops and simulations and strategies generated and espoused in War Room most often, do not match with the configurations and line-up in the actual battlefield.?
Would senior Congress leaders be bold enough to tell him point blank that computer generated data do not ensure and capture the exact sensitivity of politics from ground zero and be a credible substitute to actual tour and pick up right signals of undercurrents and underlying trends at the lowest level?.
Many elections in India have been lost on the basis of perception in the past. Its biggest example was the Lok Sabha polls of 1989. Rahul Gandhi not only needs to learn from the past but also change his own persona and style of functioning in the best interest of the party. He would have to make a fine balance by synthesizing the traditional strong point of the Congress party along with a modern and realistic outlook and scientific way of analysing the present trends and work for a better future.
(Posted on December 11, 2013 @ 7.30pm)
(Ajay N Jha is a veteran journalist from both Print and Electronic media. He is Advisor to Prasar Bharti. The views expressed are his personal. His email id is Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com> )
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