Just as one cannot imagine the Bhartiya Janata Party without the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, one cannot imagine the Congress without the Gandhi family. When the BJP is in crisis, the RSS steps in to save the day. If the Gandhi family steps aside, the Congress party may collapse altogether.
The demise of the Congress party would be fruitful only if another pan-India force is ready to replace it. That is currently not happening.
Rahul Gandhi continuing as Congress president is not an option. His position is untenable after severe defeats in two successive Lok Sabha elections. If Rahul Gandhi continues as party president, it will be more of the same.
Rahul Gandhi has become the picture of incompetence and failure. Whether or not this picture is fair to him, it’s coming in the way of the party’s chances of any rejuvenation. What the Congress needs to realise is this — it needs fresh leadership at the top.
If Rahul Gandhi takes back his decision to resign, the whole affair will seem to have been an orchestrated drama. Already, reports suggest his proposal to resign is not out of any sense of responsibility or renunciation. He wants to do so in a fit of rage, because he blames the party’s top leadership of not following instructions, fighting among each other all the time, and not working with discipline. One report has suggested that he lashed out at leaders who put their sons’ interests above the party’s — not realising that the same could be said of Sonia Gandhi.
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The worst possible outcome of this crisis would be the appointment of a non-Gandhi in the role of party president, and the Congress still being run by the Gandhi family. This would be akin to the Manmohan-Sonia model, where the Gandhi family enjoyed power without accountability. The Gandhi family will make itself immune to criticism, as the party keeps floundering. Disgruntled with the new president, party leaders would start running to the Gandhi family, thus creating two competing power centres. The Congress, eventually, would fall between two stools just like the UPA-2 government did.
Notably, the Gandhi family is not going anywhere even if a non-Gandhi becomes party president. This would only serve to devalue the post of Congress president, as Rahul Gandhi will continue to have a profile bigger than the party president. He’s not proposing to quit politics, neither is his mother or sister.
If a non-Gandhi is not an option, and Rahul Gandhi is not the option, that leaves us with Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Sonia Gandhi, as the UPA chairperson, has had her time, and now needs to bring about a generational transition in the party. That transition is clearly not an easy task. The last five years saw not Rahul Gandhi rebuilding the Congress but the Congress party helping build the image of Rahul Gandhi, without much success.
Division of labour
Before solving the problem, we need to identify what the problem is. There are two different problems with the Congress today. That the Congress party came up with its election campaign and slogan just a few days before polling began, exemplifies how poorly the party is run. Secondly, Rahul Gandhi as the party’s public face is a liability. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the 2019 Lok Sabha election a presidential contest with Rahul Gandhi (kaamdaar versus naamdaar), which only helped him increase upon the BJP’s tally of 282 seats in 2014 elections to 303 seats this time.
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Modi has always needed Amit Shah, the president of BJP, and Sonia Gandhi ran the Congress through Ahmed Patel. Rahul Gandhi has tried to do both jobs — being the public face and running the party — besides of course his quarterly holidays. Not even Modi and Sonia have tried to keep everything to themselves.
No matter what formula is devised to break the impasse, it is clear that the result will be a division of labour. Rahul Gandhi will continue to be the public face of the party, trying to build his brand and getting pilloried by the BJP on a daily basis.
Least bad option
Yet, at the very least, the party organisation deserves another person’s attention. This could only be Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, because only a Gandhi can have orders followed in the Congress party, if that. Only a Gandhi could be the unifier for the Congress party.
This is not to say that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has covered herself with glory in her debut as a mass politician this election. She hardly built her brand, making herself all about her brother. She made mistakes like a political novice, such as speculating she might take on Modi in Varanasi, and then appearing to chicken out. She didn’t turn out to be a great orator people expected her to be.
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Yet, by virtue of being a Gandhi, she’s the least bad option. A Sachin Pilot might do a better job than her perhaps, but will Ashok Gehlot listen to him? A Mallikarjun Kharge might appear more qualified for the job with his experience, but will anybody believe he is anything more than a rubber stamp of the first family?
Not that replacing party president will change the party’s fortunes overnight. In the end, the Congress party needs to regain its ability to connect with the masses. It needs to reach out to the people, listen to them, become their voice, solve their problems, occupy the opposition space. Doesn’t look like the Congress party of today, under Rahul Gandhi, knows how to do that.
Views are personal.