Basking in the lost glory

At the AICC session held at the Sri Fort auditorium in New Delhi in 1998 to approve Sonia Gandhi ascension as the party's president, Sharad Pawar — then a frontline leader — was booed and hooted by the audience for suggesting that the party needs to devise an alternate route to arrest the march of the BJP-led NDA.

He contended that the Grand Old Party no longer has the sole claim to power. He said the Congress was now akin to the feudal lord who has lost his lands and mortgaged his depilated 'haveli,' but continues to live in the glories of the past due to an inflated ego. The false pride, Pawar said, stops the erstwhile feudal from comprehending the reality. He further suggested ways to come out of his precarious state.

Instead of paying heed to Pawar, in September, 1998, at the brainstorming session supervised by Sonia Gandhi at the scenic Pachmarhi Hills in Madhya Pradesh (MP), the party decided to explore its lost ground by going to the polls alone. The leaders who appeared more sycophants rather visionaries told Mrs Gandhi that the NDA will disappear and meet the similar fate as the Janata Party in 1979, which had ousted the Congress under powerful Indira Gandhi for just two years. They said, secular and regional parties were thriving on the vote bank ceded by the Congress. Therefore, they are these regional parties that were the immediate enemies rather than the BJP.

A few months later, in May, 1999, after questioning Mrs Gandhi's credentials of becoming the prime minister, Pawar along with two other senior leaders of the party Purno Agitok Sangma and Tariq Anwar were expelled.

The strategy of going alone and reclaiming lost ground, however, failed miserably. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, fighting solo under Sonia Gandhi, the Congress lost more ground, depleting its numbers further. Thereafter, the party lost states after states in the assembly elections.

Shocking win

Following the 2002 Gujarat riots, CPI (M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet approached Mrs Gandhi and asked her to review the Pachmarhi resolution. Due to his continuous interventions, and because perhaps by then the realisation dawned on Gandhi, she held another brainstorming session at Shimla in July 2003. On the concluding day of the session, the Shimla sankalp (resolution) read out by Kumari Selja to the media, resolved to tie-up with like-minded parties. The symbolism of choosing Selja, a Dalit leader from Haryana also did not go unnoticed. The sankalp spelt out an open-minded approach of the party on pre-poll and post-poll alliances, which will be carved out at the national level. Upon returning to Delhi, Gandhi gave a free hand to Surjeet to speak to other parties. At that point, the elections were still a year away.

But then, later that year, when the BJP won the state assembly elections in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, deputy prime minister LK Advani thought it was the right time to call for early elections and recommended a premature dissolution of the Lok Sabha. He wanted to cash in on the voter's upswing which he thought was in party's favor. The elections were conducted in May, 2004. During the campaign, the BJP left no stone unturned in glorifying its work through "India Shining" campaign. Almost all the newspapers, analysts and opinion polls pre-dicted a resounding victory for BJP.

A day ahead of May 13, 2004, when votes were to be counted, the BJP headquarters at 10 Ashoka Road was buzzing with activity. The party office in-charge Venkaiah Naidu had laid out elaborate arrangements for celebrations, and to receive Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani to the party headquarters after the results were over. Labourers were busy putting up a tent in the lawns, and the choicest of sweets had been ordered from a famous sweet shop in Chandni Chowk. In contrast, Congress headquarters a distance away was deserted. The spokesperson Jaipal Reddy putting a brave face was telling a handful of journalists to wait for the results, when they're pestering him to spell out party's future after the results.

May 13, was a shocker for everyone involved: Surjeet's formula had worked. BJP had lost the elections. The surprise results helped the Congress return to power riding on the shoulders of its allies. Every exit polls had given a majority to the Atal Bihari Vajypayi-led NDA government. They had predicted BJP-led NDA to secure over 240 to 250 seats. But when the actual results came, the numbers were completely opposite and the Congress and its allies got 216 seats, as against a projection of 170. The NDA just managed to get 187 seats against the projections of a thumping majority. Another surprise was in store for the Congress: Mrs. Gandhi declined the post of the prime minister, and instead asked former finance minister Manmohan Singh, a respected economist to head the government. LK Advani later admitted that they lost in 2004 due to overconfidence and wrong slogans like "India Shining", in which the Opposition punched holes by simply pointing at India's poverty.

Rahul's tasks

Following this win, at the party's third brainstorming session at Jaipur in 2013, Congress once again sought a rethink on coalition politics. Sonia Gandhi, in her speech as well as political resolutions at the AICC plenary following the brainstorming, steered clear of any mention of the coalition government it ran at the Centre. At Jaipur, where Rahul Gandhi after being coronated as the party's vice-president, gave a message to the party's cadres to prepare to go alone since the party's organisational structure in many states had crumbled because of the compulsion of alliance politics. The Jaipur resolution not only called for the treading of a balance between coalition and organisation, but steered clear of its secular ideology, unlike the Shimla resolution. It focused over issues of governance and sought to woo the youth to yield results. Ironically, the paper on ideology, which was circulated at the Jaipur meeting, suggested that the party does not limit itself to secularism, welfare schemes for the poor, and, caste politics. In September 2007, when Rahul was appointed the general secretary in-charge of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), he promised to reform youth politics. He has sought to repeat this experience with the Congress, but failed to build the party which has been reduced to family unit, by gra-ndmother Indira Gandhi. She made party dependent on Nehru-Gandhi family, so much so that if the family abandons its patronisation, there is fear of its disintegration, because of a weak organisational structure.

The party remains in tatters as Rahul has done nothing except making noises about the "structural reforms". He first told workers in Uttar Pradesh that the Congress would not be revived in the state unless it contests on its own and then justified an alliance with the Samajwadi Party in the last assembly election. Even though Congress continues to be a central column for any secular alliance, there is a need to have clarity on alliances. Many opposition leaders were asking Congress to emulate a Bihar type grand alliance at the national level by sacrificing ego. They had been asking the party to focus on Western part of India, including MP and Chhattisgarh and leave UP and Bihar to regional parties to limit seats of the BJP-led NDA.

(LK Advani with Congress’ Sonia Gandhi and Union Minister Rajnath Singh  — File photo)

Alliance phobia

At a time, when the grand old party was facing an existential threat, it is surprising that it was still not ready to concede ground to like-minded parties. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, where party has no base, it has refused to part two seats of the Kashmir Valley to ally National Conference. To save face, they said, there will be friendly contest. In a similar vein, in 2004, when the BJP had a limited geographical presence, it failed to mobilize its Hindu voter base because Vajpayee had distanced himself from the RSS and tried to position himself as a secular leader, especially in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots. Modi is smarter than Vajpayee. While Vajpayee dumped saffron poster boy Kalyan Singh in UP for a more inclusive Rajnath Singh, Modi brought in Adityanath, who may be unacceptable to a lot of people, but addresses its core Hindu voter base.

In stitching alliances, the NDA has taken a lead, cobbling together 40 parties. It succeeded in bringing in even partners like Shiv Sena and Asom Gana Parishad, who had been criticising Modi over the years or have left the NDA.

Alliances need sacrifice, and BJP has shown the way by sacrificing its ministers and sitting MPs to concede seats to its allies. On the other hand, the Congress, which should have been more open to alliances, is not ready to concede seats. Like during the 2004 polls, Dalits, minorities, tribals, farmers from all over the country are in search of a political platform. In the words, of analyst Anurag Modi, the common voter in the villages hardly gets influenced by TV debates. His voice may not be heard by those sitting at the highest pedestals, but his time has come when India votes. Congress's main challenge it to avoid the fragmentation of this vote. This can only be possible if Rahul Gandhi ignores sycophants around him and toes his mother's tried and tested line. It also needs a sincere politician like Surjeet, to take into account larger interests rather than myopic, personal or just party interests.