The Congress has done it again! After Ms Sonia Gandhi's ascent to the party's presidency through the farce of an election, members of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) have authorised her to nominate members to the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
Hence, after all the talk about democracy, elections and revamping the organisation, the party is back to being what it has been since the 1970s Indian National Congress Private Limited, a proprietary political concern of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. While it has every right to become that, the cause of democracy in India is ill-served by the country's leading opposition party making a travesty of its internal democracy. Besides, the question remains for Congressmen: Will such a transformation give their party the direction and thrust it so badly needs?
Judging by past experience and present performance, the answer will be emphatically in the negative. After the Emergency, the Congress developed a marked proneness to shoot itself in the foot every time it was poised to move forward. Under Ms Sonia Gandhi's dispensation, the proneness seems to have become second nature after an initial spell of mature and responsible political conduct. The change became manifest in March 1999, through an event which had its beginnings in February. After a visit to Narayanpur village in Bihar, where the Ranvir Sena had killed 11 Dalits on the night of February 11, Ms Sonia Gandhi had said in Patna on February 13 that "on moral grounds, the Rabri Government has no right to stay in power even for a minute." Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde, a Congress general secretary, who accompanied her, had stated that the issue of "extending support (to the Rashtriya Janata Dal government) was now a closed chapter."
If all this was not indication enough that the Congress would endorse the imposition of President's rule in Bihar, nothing could be so. Unfortunately, Ms Sonia Gandhi soon announced that her party would do no such thing. As a result, the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, which did not have a majority in the Rajya Sabha and depended on the Congress's support to get the resolution passed, was forced to revoke President's rule on March 8, 1999. Her action, whether a reaction to a sudden reactivation of the Bofors case or some other development, severely undermined the Congress's credibility. The damage in Bihar, where its decision kept alive the corrupt and incompetent RJD government, was severe. Several important Congress leaders resigned from the party whose support base was seriously dented.
Ms Sonia Gandhi's volte face on Bihar indicated a basic change in her attitude towards the first NDA government which was then lurching from crisis to crisis thanks to periodic threats by the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) prima donna, Ms Jayalalitha, to take her party out of it. The threats, perceived to be aimed at forcing the Centre to bail her out of the corruption charges she was facing, the shortage and high prices of several essential commodities, and an unprecedented power crisis in Delhi, had created the impression that the NDA was incapable of governing. There was a sharp fall in its popularity and it did poorly in the elections to several state assemblies in November, 1998.
The first NDA government would in all likelihood have totally lost its credibility had it continued in office before finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Such a development would have enabled the Congress to once again claim with some conviction that it alone could govern India; no patchwork quilt coalition of disparate parties could last its full term in office, to say nothing of providing good governance. Instead of waiting for such a thing to happen, the party, under Ms Sonia Gandhi's leadership, joined hands with the AIADMK and brought the Vajpayee government down through a no- confidence motion that was carried on April 17, 1999, by a margin of one vote.
The government's defeat by only one vote created a surge of sympathy for the it, particularly since despite its many failures Mr Vajpayee was widely considered to be a decent man battling impossible odds. The fact that the one-vote margin was provided by Mr Girdhar Gamang, who had in the meantime become Chief Minister of Orissa, had contributed to the surge. There was a widespread feeling that though he was technically qualified to vote, as he remained a member of the Lok Sabha and had not been as yet elected to the state legislature, morality required him to abstain. On the other hand, the failure of the Congress and its allies to form a government, which they had earlier said they would do without any trouble, turned against them a large section of the public which resented the expenditure of time, money and administrative effort on yet another election. This, the Kargil war, and the fact that many in the country balked at having a person of Italian origin as prime minister, ensured NDA's return to power with more than 300 seats; the Congress's total came down to an all-time low of 112.
All this bears repetition because public memory is short and the Congress continues making the same kind of mistakes. Consider the case of Manipur. The Congress had first indicated on December 15 that the situation in the state was grim and that it would support the imposition of President's rule. On December 22, however, Ms Sonia Gandhi said that the Prime Minister should consult all parties and take a decision. Whether the reversal of the party's stand followed, as has been pointed out by some, Mr Ottavio Quattrocchi's arrest by Malaysian police on December 20, in connection with the Bofors case or not, it did little good to the party's credibility. Its embarrassment was total when, towards the end of December, 10 out of the state's 11 Congress MLAs, who had been demanding the imposition of President's rule, formed a new outfit called the Manipur Regional Congress Party and said that they would join hands with the BJP to topple the state government.
Or consider the furore the Congress created in Parliament last month on the Ayodhya issue. The idea was clearly to embarrass the government and win back the support of the Muslims, which it had lost. Its action, however, once again reminded Muslims of its failure to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Also, it was the telecasting of the Ramayana serial during Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership that created a climate which to a large extent enabled the movement for the construction of the Ram temple to gather momentum. Besides, Rajiv Gandhi helped to legitimise the construction of the Ram temple by allowing its foundation stone to be laid in 1989 and by launching his campaign for the Lok Sabha elections of the same year from Ayodhya.
The Congress has shot itself in
the foot in the recent cases mentioned because the coterie around Ms Sonia
Gandhi decides what is to be done. Coterie members, who hold their positions
at her pleasure, will give such advice as will keep them in her favour,
even if that harms the party. Independent and self-respecting people of
integrity, who would not knowingly give wrong advice, do not join coteries
because they find it humiliating and degrading to became flunkies and sidekicks,
which coterie members essentially are. The coterie thrives because Congress
lacks internal democracy which would have enabled politically astute leaders
to rise to highest positions from below by their own effort and make sure
that the party was not afflicted by a death wish.