P Bhattacharya
It didn’t take long for Dr Manmohan Singh Government to have its reality check on the so called ‘reform’ path. In 72-hours after it sought to climb out of the hole it has dug for itself, its ally in Government, Trinamool Congress (TMC), snuffed out the Congress’s plan to bring structural change in the pension funds, thus making the cash on that account become available for trading in money markets.
This, without so much as a promise to earn for the retirees a higher and a fixed return, was the idea which Singh and his colleagues had chosen as one of the few policy moves that could remove the stigma on the Government of being in ‘policy paralysis.’ The Prime Minister had actually got a earful at the recently held party jamboree called the Congress Working Committee meeting.
Knowing that comeuppance was round the corner, the worried Congress leaders had torn into Singh’s visage shedding their usual reluctance to speak (so that patronage continues flow their way) loudly that he was the PM of not just a corrupt council of ministers but also an inept one. This was at the last Congress Working Committee held a fortnight ago.
Sonia Gandhi might have quietly enjoyed Singh’s hauling over the hot coals – no pun intended, for one is not guilty till proven so – but the criticism of the leadership might have stuck to her as well. For, under her dispensation, the party was supposed to oversee the workings of the Government. So if Singh presided over the most corrupt Government of independent India, she too could not be beyond the ambit of censure.
However, this CWC was reflective of another phenomenon. There were 42 party leaders present and all of them spoke, but only three sought a transfer of leadership to Rahul Gandhi, the anointed icon of young India. The most vocal of the three, Ajit Jogi, former chief Minister and current party Chief of Chhattisgarh did make the most emotional appeal in favour of Rahul, without even raising a single supporting cast that could make it seem an engineered exercise.
So has Rahul Gandhi lost his verve after the Uttar Pradesh polls? Is he no longer considered a vote winner? If that be the case, what would happen to the Congress party? That is a serious question to seek a riposte. Let us try to find an answer to that.
The near certainty of the Congress-led coalition losing in the next general elections, what kind of a shape the party can take. Rahul, of course, is assured of inheriting the party mantle irrespective of poll results. But what could he do to with the moribund party?
Surprisingly, though Rahul has straddled the political arena for close to a decade, he and his team has not produced a single idea in the political realm that could signal about the path he would like the party to follow. Of course, he has worked hard in the field during the last UP election mingling with the grassroots. He might not have won the election, but what could be the lessons he imbibed in the process?
For one, he knows that the ‘development’ imagery works at the ground level as a process of politics. But has he realised that platform needs to provide answers to questions: what kind of development? Top down or bottom-up. Who brings this development? The external agencies or those who are wedded to the individual communities. How is this development translate into individual resource? In the form of a straight dole that is a sure way of making the process a victim of corruption or interventions designed for self-generation. There are many such questions.
Rahul has not indicated whether in his scheme the urbanisation of India is a natural process of historical development or whether to resort to what APJ Abdul Kalam had sought to focus in his plan called PURA (Providing Urban facilities in Rural Areas).
The Congress party machine is not capable of finding answers to these questions. Nor could Rahul get the required responses from some academic pundits sitting in the climate controlled environs of a Delhi institution. For his solace, it is to be said that in this transitional phase of Indian political/social history, Congress is not the only one that will have to seek answers to these questions. Every party, including the institutional left and communist parties are seeking answers to these questions.
The Congress is not really a political party in a pure scientific sense. It is an agglomeration of individual interests that is dependent on direct political power of governance. A successful Congress president could be one who could mediate between these often competing interests. Or one could be also like Indira Gandhi who attained control of the party after the split by the sheer weight of her personality and popularity amongst the people.
The class consciousness of this party has undergone a change over the years. At a populist level what Rahul attempted by communing with the likes of Kalawati was a bit like the stories of Arabian Nights and Haroun-al Rashid. This was the style of benevolent despot who knows that for holding on to power meant that the citizens would have to feel secure both physically and economically.
That style of benevolent despotism of the kind of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi or Atal Behari Vajpayee have got time barred. The increased political consciousness of the people now seek an agency that works with them, and not in exclusion of them. CNF
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