Where The Congress Faltered
The Party has become impervious to feedback and is thus unable to course correct
Published in the Indian Express
In the aftermath of the election results and notably Congress President Rahul Gandhi's resignation, various umbrella words and labels have been thrown about to stand-in for substantive analysis of what went wrong with Congress' campaign and the way forward. However any meaningful interrogation of these words betrays lack of conceptual clarity and understanding of the issues involved. These issues have relevance beyond the current moment and people involved and it is important to inject some depth in this conversation.
A key theme to emerge out of the fallout is "accountability". The question of accountability is inextricably linked to responsibility and thus it is not clear what accountability means without first fixing responsibility. A political party is by definition a platform for collaboration and as such there is collective responsibility. By extension, it is imperative that there be shared understanding too - of what went wrong and how power - formal and informal - was exercised at multiple levels of decision-making and execution. It is important to have these conversations to fix individual lines of responsibility instead of arbitrarily looking for fall guys based on personal biases and vested interest. At this point, it also must be said that any meaningful (and disciplined) discussion of this kind is necessarily internal and cannot be supplanted by motivated leaks and/or casual personalised commentary by those on the outside.
The next umbrella category is "political" or more to the point, "apolitical". This is a label affixed on those who have not personally contested elections but have allegedly exercised significant power in decision-making to the detriment of the Party. It is argued that such individuals are necessarily disconnected from "the people" and propound niche, dying or impractical ideas. This logic is not entirely without merit: the need to contest an election does impose valuable discipline, especially the understanding of the centrality of organisation and logistics of mass outreach which political activists/advisers may gloss over. However, if the metric is alone having contested elections, then some questions arise: was Gandhi "apolitical"? Are RSS and its functionaries "apolitical"? Was Kejriwal political before his first election in which he finished over traditional parties? What about the clutch of "celebrities" and political progenies who have contested elections managed entirely by someone else? Have they become "political"? What about those elected representatives who won in a wave, like AAP candidates in Delhi, or BJP candidates in 2014 and 2019? What too of the local strongman, who wins his election entirely by dint of local patronage networks? What kind of "political" is that? And what about a celebrated political consultant like Prashant Kishor, who has never contested himself? Is he political? On the other hand, what of the "political" leaders who have come a cropper? This is not to pass value judgment on any one of the above but to point out the lack of conceptual clarity in the definition of "political", which is aimed more at delegitimising and excluding some individuals than necessarily conducting reasoned analysis. Functionaries should certainly be "political" in a political party but the determination must be necessarily be made on an individual basis instead of as a category and be predicated on his/her understanding of people, of distribution of power, of building organisation, the ability to identify issues with mass appeal, the art of mass communication etc.
Other themes which have emerged are "dynasty" and lack of "internal democracy". Without getting into a discussion on the underlying de(merits) of these issues, a cursory look at the political landscape of India makes it obvious that neither dynasty nor lack of internal democracy are impediments to winning elections. Indian society is structured around kinship and inheritance, including of one's caste and power in India remains very weakly formalised. In many ways, inherited political power is a function of these twin themes. There is little empirical evidence that the electorate is repelled by inherited political power as reflected in victorious political dynasts across the political spectrum, including in the BJP and its alliance partners. As far as internal democracy is concerned, the only party which can claim to have some semblance of institutionalised internal democracy is the Left, which is facing its biggest existential crisis. In all other parties, especially the BJP, power and decision-making are centralised without sending the electorate (and political commentators) in a big tizzy.
This brings us to the two things which matter most on the limited question of winning elections: first, whether on balance the political party is outward or inward looking; and second, its ability to refine its own understanding/thinking and course correct based on feedback from the ground. It is here that the Congress Party has faltered. The Congress Party has never been an ideological straitjacket and has always absorbed within itself individuals of various proclivities. This ideological looseness combined with Congress’ history of having been in power for much of independent India's history has suffused the organisation with acquisitive and ambitious individuals preoccupied with capturing the internal organisation. Till the time the Congress was the default party of governance, this inward prioritisation made sense for those motivated by power for power's sake. "Political" thus became more about the ability to excel at internal intrigue than resonating people's hopes and aspirations to craft a political mandate. However now that the ground has shifted, this inward orientation is hobbling the Party's ability to regroup. The lack of a clear message and organisation are consequences of this inward orientation. Further, the predominantly inward orientation has rendered the Party incapable of critiquing itself because all dissenting feedback is necessarily seen as a challenge to power (balance) instead of being evaluated on merit. This is also what is making it difficult for the Party to find its way out of the current crisis.
Finally, it has to be acknowledged that this is a somewhat unique moment in history. Around the world, traditional liberal political parties are grappling with majoritarian nationalism. Much of the criticism being meted out to the Congress Party - elitism, leadership crisis, internecine wars - will find resonance in most other countries' critique of their liberal parties. At another time of intellectual churning, it was the Congress Party which steered the freedom movement to articulate an unprecedented and breath-taking conception of nationalism. The challenge for the Congress Party this moment too goes beyond the question of leadership alone: it is a challenge to reimagine liberal politics.
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