DNA Edit: Without a rival, Rahul Gandhi will remain the Congress mascot

The defeat in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections is the latest in the never-ending series of setbacks that the Congress party has suffered in recent years. Yet the man at the helm of affairs and the Congress’ national face, Rahul Gandhi, continues to hold on to his exalted position in the party. The world over, in democratic politics, accountability is the name of the game, but in the Congress, the Nehru-Gandhi family’s position continues to remain unchallenged. UP is home turf for the family but the Congress has been out of the reckoning in this state for 27 years. Despite the lack of a political base except the pocket boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli, the Congress has clung to the belief that the Gandhis are the glue holding the Congress together in the absence of an abiding ideology. However, the Congress has no more regional satraps left who are ambitious enough, or with popularity at the grassroots, to go their separate ways.

This lack of ambition among Congress leaders to challenge Rahul Gandhi’s ineffectual leadership reflects the party’s abysmal state. Earlier, the Congress could boast of the likes of formidable leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, YS Rajasekhara Reddy, and PA Sangma. Today, the regional parties founded by these leaders have all but upstaged the Congress in their respective states. Some of the stronger regional leaders like Harish Rawat, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Oommen Chandy, Tarun Gogoi, SM Krishna and Virbhadra Singh are fading away or out of the reckoning in the immediate future. Among the young leaders in the Congress stable, Sachin Pilot looks promising, but he will first have to prove his mettle in next year’s Rajasthan assembly elections. Jyotiraditya Scindia is yet to gain acceptability in the faction-riven Congress unit in his home state, Madhya Pradesh. A bevy of disconnected, mostly ageing, leaders with no popular base to call their own like Digvijaya Singh, Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari, Renuka Chowdhury continue to hold the fort for the Congress in the media, in Parliament and at the AICC headquarters in Delhi. The Congress badly needs a generational shift and an ideological mooring that can make it relevant as an opposition party.

It can be argued that the Congress was in a similar situation in the 1996 to 2004 period until the surprise victory in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. But the BJP under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is different from the party and government headed by AB Vajpayee and LK Advani. Under the Modi-Shah combine, the BJP has morphed into an aggressive ruling party determined to extend its footprint and stakes in power in every state of the country. In contrast, Rahul Gandhi comes across as a disinterested politician, a diffident public speaker and a poor tactician. In mature democracies, politicians on the losing side bow out of party leadership to make way for a better leader. Take the example of Ed Miliband, Al Gore, and at home LK Advani, who gave up the Leader of Opposition after failing in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Change has to come from the top. Both Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul, should have stepped aside after the party was reduced to 44 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014. Time is running out and the Congress deserves a better and stronger leadership to face the Modi-Shah combine in 2019.