The Congress doesn't seem to mind electoral losses. But it must bounce back for a balance in democracy

The propensity of the Congress to lose an election, and then to turn its back on the humiliation, is glaring. Any electoral debacle would ideally trigger an appraisal exercise within a party. It is surprising that the urgency of self-evaluation, the need for corrective measures and for the right people to carry these out is missing in the Congress. It has already been a couple of days since the party suffered a total loss in four of the five Assembly elections. The Tamil Nadu verdict can at best be a consolation for the Congress which merely piggybacked the winning DMK. Surprisingly, not many senior leaders, and certainly not the party leadership, have spoken on its sorry performance. It seems the Congress, as always, has turned its back to the losses. It is only a matter of time before the G-23, a splinter group within the Congress, will strike back asking for course correction. The “insiders” scuttled every past attempt by this group to pin accountability on the leadership. Not many in the Congress want to alter the cosy arrangement that exists in the top echelons. But the absence of a peacemaker between this group and the Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka troika will worsen the situation for the party’s “first family”. The Congress has already lost some of its promising second-generation leaders to the BJP and others, and the latest round of electoral reverses might convince others who are on the brink of quitting. It has not only lost power to the BJP and others in the last six years but also forfeited its status of the principal Opposition in at least half a dozen States.

There are two pressing issues for the Congress to address. One, Rahul cannot run the party through a proxy. The spin doctors around him would suggest he is reluctant to return as the party president but it is a very convenient arrangement. It gives Rahul the cushion to isolate himself from the ignominy of defeat but grab the credit in case of a victory. If Rahul doesn’t want to lead the Congress, he should step aside and allow a democratic and transparent election for a new leader. That leader should enjoy all the independence that Rahul had when he helmed the party. Two, it has long been suggested that Priyanka is the magic wand that can rid the party of all its woes. But that’s not happened. She has remained as much a part-time politician as her brother and her electoral track record is no better than Rahul’s. She is the third most — if not the second — powerful leader of the part. Just like Rahul, her politics has been more about photo opportunities than building on any energy that her occasional visits to UP may have generated. The party’s poor performance in the UP panchayat elections is another telling comment on the “charisma” of Priyanka, who her admirers see as another Indira Gandhi. A stronger Congress is needed to restore the balance of order in our parliamentary democracy. The Congress must rise from the ashes and recognise the problems before even thinking of solving them.