Edit: Congress’s crisis

Former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said what very few in Congress party would dare to say. He said that party president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi should speak out more, both with the party workers and with the media. And he was also indiscreet enough to say that there will come a day when a non-Nehru-Gandhi would lead the party. It can be argued that Chidambaram has no axe to grind, that he can speak his mind. He has ruled himself out from party politics on the plea that he is too old. Chidambaram is still a year away from turning 70, and he seems to have taken on the role of the elder statesman. Given the preternatural deference that cringing part leaders show towards Sonia and Rahul, what Chidambaram had to say almost amounts to being sacrilegious. Chidambaram must have factored in the implications of advising the party’s royalty. He was also shrewd enough to observe that the revamping of the party is needed for the Congress to play its role as an opposition party. 

Quite clearly what Chidambaram said must be what many among the senior and mid-level leaders and workers must be thinking too. Congress men and women grumble loudly enough but they never dare to say it on record. Even if they do not dare to admit that they agree with what Chidambaram had to say, they must be quite happy that somebody is saying what needed to be said. It should not come as a surprise however that there would be quite a few prominent party leaders who may rap Chidambaram for speaking out of turn as it were, and they may hope to please Sonia and Rahul by doing so.

In any other party, after the decisive defeat in the Lok Sabha elections in May this year, it would have been the norm for Sonia and Rahul to step down. They did make the ritualistic gesture of owning up responsibility for the poll debacle and they had even offered to step down. The party did not accept their resignations. The critics of Nehru-Gandhis insist that the family has it in its power to step aside if it wants to but it clings to power as greedily as anyone else and retain its vice-like grip over the party.

There is deep dissatisfaction within the party with the quality of leadership that Rahul has provided during the Congress-led UPA’s second term in office from 2009 to 2014, and also during the election. He is accused of having a built a coterie which did not listen to the party workers’ demands, concerns and views. There is the strong feeling that the Congress’s  ignominious performance in the Lok Sabha elections is due to the wrong choice of candidates as well as bad management of the campaign. The disaffection, discontent and anger remains a subterranean rumble for the most part, and what Chidambaram has done is to bring it to the surface in the suave language of a practised lawyer.

The crisis in the Congress is one of leadership, at the top as well as at other levels. It is something that has no easy solutions. One of the family loyalists and a vocal party man speaking in private wanted to know whether Ghulam Nabi Azad, AK Antony and Digvijay Singh would be better than Rahul Gandhi. He obviously does not think so. It seems to be the case that realistic and even cynical Congress leaders prefer the Nehru-Gandhis to lead the party because they do not trust each other. It is the cynicism at other levels in the party that must change before Congress can reinvent itself.