HVK Archives: Tired & uncertain - Where does the Congress go from here?
Tired & uncertain - Where does the Congress go from here? - The Indian Express
Editorial
()
12 August 1997
Title: Tired and uncertain - Where does the Congress go from here?
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 12, 1997
On its return from what was supposed to be a historic plenary in Calcutta,
the Congress looks tired and uncertain. In short, it looks. no different
from the party of a week ago. That the organisation has no intention of
reforming itself is obvious from the fact that all its energies were
expended in the tussle for seats on the Congress Working Committee. If
party workers were hoping for new beginnings and a firm sense of direction,
they will be bitterly disappointed. Fifty years on from Independence and on
the threshold of the next century, the grand old party stares its own
demise in the face and has no idea what to do about it. There was nothing
at the plenary to suggest the Congress can recapture something of the
spirit of 50 years ago when it bestrode the country like a colossus and
encapsulated the dreams of millions. The rhetoric does go back in political
and economic resolutions to the hoary principles of secularism and primacy
for the downtrodden. But the chasm between words and action remains and
the country has grown too cynical to be taken in by tired formulae and
quasi-apologies. When Congress leaders reveal weak-mindedness about their
economic prescriptions of yesterday, they remove the last shreds of the
party's credibility. Even the appearance of unity eludes the party.
Over the last half century, the Congress has fallen from grace on
innumerable occasions but it has also done much to be proud about. Its
blackest day was the Emergency. But it also nurtured democracy and built
institutions to underpin it. Despite several counter trends, its core
vision of a pluralistic society has stood the country in good stead.
Widespread poverty survives but large-scale famine and starvation have been
averted. Its economic policies before the 1980s are now much reviled, often
with good reason, but it cannot be forgotten that the country's unity and
stability and its future potential are in part a function of the physical
infrastructure and the middle-classes created by those policies. The
Congress can also take credit for recognising, if belatedly, that a closed
economy was no longer in the country's best interests and for showing the
courage to strike out in new directions.
Indira Gandhi's legacy of centralising control in the party president was
the single most destructive tendency in the Congress. It has never been
able to return to democratic methods of functioning. As a consequence, it
has lost its moorings among the people, its rank and file have become more
and more irrelevant and its main business has became holding on to power at
any cost, even if by proxy. Decay is inevitable. The Congress has shrunk
into a shadow of its former self because it has come to represent no one
but some power-hungry politicians. Pessimism is hard to avoid given the
bankruptcy of ideas among the present leadership. Gandhiji had advised
disbanding the party after Independence. It is ironic how the Congress has
been following those words of wisdom inexorably decade after decade despite
its will to survive.
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