His project to bring internal democracy in Congress bottom-up was a non-starter. Succession at the top is dynastic. So how does he now ensure that talent rises bottom-up, and leadership travels top-down?
Is dynastic politics good or bad? Is it the stabilising factor in Indian polity, or an anti-meritocratic curse? There is no better time to debate this than in the run up to Rahul Gandhi’s formal coronation as Congress president.
It takes me back to an exchange on 14 March, 2008. Narendra Modi and Digvijaya Singh appeared together on a panel at the India Today Conclave in New Delhi. Such a match-up, top leaders of the two rival parties sparring with each other in public is unthinkable today.
It was very contentious, yet civil. Both know their lines and politics. Both are formidable political warriors.
For once, however, Digvijaya, certainly the more experienced of the two, was stumped. Modi asked him, how did he justify dynastic rule in his party. Digvijaya recovered quickly and said it was common enough in democracies around the world. For evidence, he said, look at America and the Clintons. This is precisely when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were locked in a close battle for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. Digvijaya’s short point was, if nobody is complaining about the Clintons in America, why do we about the Gandhis in India?
This was a bit much, even for a backbencher like me that day. So I grabbed a microphone and asked Digvijaya if he could tell me when someone challenged the Gandhi family for leadership of the Congress and lived to tell the tale. I added that we needn’t be judgemental because other parties in India were dynastic too. But let’s cut the hypocrisy and not trivialise another country’s democracy.
That exchange can be accessed on the internet. I had written a ‘National Interest’ reflecting on this earlier (14 December 2013), wondering what had gone so wrong with the Congress that a party riding high in 2009 was “now looking at its lowest mark ever next May, may be even in two figures”. That something is seriously wrong with the party was also then publicly acknowledged by Rahul Gandhi. Hours after the rout in the most recent state elections then, he said he was going to change the Congress party in ways “you cannot even imagine”.
It should be safe to presume now that that project continues in Rahul’s mind. Now, since he didn’t spell out then, what it was, you and I can only guess. But we are at liberty to imagine what can work, and what may not. Rahul’s essential thought has been that there is no internal or grassroots democracy in the Congress, or in all of Indian politics. That is why it is neither meritocratic nor genuinely representative.
Nobody would argue with that. But if a deeply rundown, even self-destructive, political party wishes to rebrand, reposition and rejuvenate, when will it rise from bottom-up? Top-down is less convincing because your top leadership is by definition through dynastic succession.
Rahul has been on his democratisation project off and on for almost 15 years. That, indeed, was the supposed reason why he did not take any formal responsibility in 10 years of the UPA. His point was, he had to rebuild the party. If the result is the secular decline (apologies if that sounds cruel) of the party meanwhile, he needs to admit that his method is not working. This is 2017 and the party has anything but democratised in the manner Rahul would have wanted. His elevation affirms the state of back-to-normal for the Congress. Most of his key lieutenants are also mini-dynasts. It is, therefore, fair to ask, where is the promised change?
That is why we go back to that decade-old exchange with Digvijaya Singh. His leader has been saying their party has an internal democratic deficit. Can you change by beginning with dynastic succession at the top? In short, you may have diagnosed the disease correctly. But ideally, the cure lies in changing yourselves (the family) first. The rest will follow. Instead of taking years, therefore, holding student body and Youth Congress and then taluka/panchayat level elections to discover deserving new leaders, Rahul could have begun, if he had the courage, by holding real elections for the party president and vice-president and encouraging people to challenge him. He would have won for sure. And if his defeated challengers still continued to grow in the party, rather than be skinned alive, it would enhance his stature. The next stage would be genuine elections to the CWC, and for general secretaries. It would have fitted the truism that talent is discovered bottom-up but leadership has to travel top-down.
At this point, anti-Modi/RSS-ism will define the Congress agenda. But at some point soon Rahul will need to worry about the obsolescence of the Congress product, its fundamental value proposition. Its old, and most loyal vote-bank of the poor, Dalits and minorities is now breached. The party can’t continue with all its promises to them being negative. If you are a Muslim, we will protect you from riots, or give you relief if you are a riot victim. But what will you do for me if I am an ordinary, secure Muslim dreaming of a better life for myself and my children? Do I have to become a riot victim to deserve your healing touch? Or if I am a poor villager, do I need to fall sick to deserve your great freebies? What if my family and I are in robust health? What will you do to improve my opportunities, to help me compete on a larger stage? And similarly, the poor everywhere: alright, you give me MGNREGA and free food and I won’t starve. But what will you do for me thereon? And finally, if I am a poor tribal, you may come to help if I am displaced unfairly. But what if I am not? I just live in extreme, degrading and hopeless poverty and want a better life?
In short, here is the new voter’s question: 70 years after Independence, am I permitted to dream for more than two square meals and physical safety? You ask any poor Indian these questions, and she will say she deserves better. That is why she dumped her trusted old Congress. If you were aspirational, Modi sounded more persuasive. If you are povertarian, then AAP is most certainly more sincerely convincing.
So who exactly are you, the Congress? And what do you stand for? Congress leaders have not been answering these questions. Its voters have moved on. Not talking to the media is now in fashion (from our selfish, self-important point of view), but it is a public figure’s choice. Narendra Modi, and many successful regional leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, Naveen Patnaik and Mayawati, do not engage with the media in the conventional, old, relaxed manner. But each one has found their own way of communicating with their voters. What is Rahul’s?
What does one tell a hall full of IIT students when one of them asks their guest speaker, what does Rahul Gandhi have to show on his CV besides his DNA?
Yes, Rahul needs to fix his party in ways we probably cannot imagine. But he has to begin by sharing with his new-gen voters what is it that he is imagining. He has to establish a conversation with them before he starts whipping his partymen behind closed doors. He has to convince young Indians he is putting his hand up, and is there for as long as it takes to rebuild the party, and that his commitment won’t be conditional on the Gujarat election results.