Top News

The Congress in Kerala avoided a fiasco by a hair’s breadth in the wake of a sterling election victory after a decade in the wilderness. In the end, good sense prevailed, and the right man made it, but not without a considerable loss of time, and worse, a loss of face.

The longer it took, the worse the party’s state leadership and its national leadership looked. They looked helpless, mute witnesses to the working out of impersonal processes of history before which the party’s top guns stood rooted to the ground. They appeared to have no agency.

The people had spoken through the ballot box. They had spoken clearly. But the leaders lacked the courage to make themselves heard above the clamour of those who were eyeing the chief minister’s chair.

Also read: While North India corners its Muslims, Tamil Nadu gives them Cabinet seats

What if the right man had not been chosen after the people’s verdict had been so clear-cut? Would there be a tranquil acceptance of the outcome by voters? Would the state Congress itself have acquiesced without a murmur? What protest actions might the defeated parties have mounted? Would voters be left cheated?

Grave questions

It was amply clear who they had in mind for Chief Minister — the man who had led the party on the streets and inside the legislative chamber to take on the previous government and its leadership. The wider implications of such an eventuality, nationally, can only be left to the imagination.

But there could be little doubt about this: the BJP, the party that wants Congress to be wiped clean from the face of India since the latter’s ideology alone is a thorn in the side of the Hindutva proponents, would have laughed all the way to the political bank.

Also read: Where have Modi’s rivals gone? The slow erosion of India’s Opposition

Indeed, these are grave questions for the Congress leadership, which has lost the habit of winning elections, and when it does win, it spits in the wind. It can’t handle even a famous victory well, as the Kerala example shows.

Spirit of listlessness

But Kerala only happens to be the most recent in a long line of leadership tremulousness ending in unsatisfactory results.

In Punjab in 2021, the Congress sent out its own Chief Minister in ignominy in the wake of dirty in-fighting and entrusted the vital role of state party chief to the care of one whose finest hour had been at the cricket crease. Since then, the Congress has not regained its poise in the state.

Karnataka was a remarkable example of the Congress wresting power from an entrenched BJP and its well-oiled party machine in the 2023 Assembly election. A large number of civil society organisations had indirectly but energetically contributed to the Congress’s memorable win.

But a spirit of listlessness appears to have set in, with leading party factions whiling away the hour in degrading confrontation and mutual acrimony, and running off to Delhi every few weeks to hear what the so-called high command has to say. The high command of course is silent as a mouse, fearful of any utterances or action on its part that might upset the applecart.

Suspense in Karnataka

Evidently, the trouble in Karnataka has arisen from a power-sharing deal brokered between key factions by the national leadership when the five-year governance term was about to commence.

Power was supposed to be handed over to the rival faction when the Chief Minister’s term came to the halfway mark. It’s been six months since that time came, and there is a big heave-ho on in the state’s intra-Congress politics.

Also read: From ‘Pookie’ to policy: Can Satheesan’s optics survive governance?

The ruling party and the government are denied tranquillity and focus in such circumstances. Fortunately for the Congress, the state BJP, which has the organisational muscle to engineer its way back to office, too, appears deeply divided and faction-ridden.

Rebuke in velvet gloves

Factions frequently appear when there are too many social groupings to please and many are influential enough to cast a shadow on public life in general and the political space in particular. Ideological bonding then fails to work as adhesive.

The situation turns more complex when there are commanding individual figures around as faction chiefs. BJP and Congress both suffer from this last syndrome in Karnataka.

Recently, the BJP’s national president, on a visit to Bengaluru, asked the state party unit to pull up its socks if it hopes to return to power. This is a rebuke in velvet gloves.

Chhattisgarh ‘promise’ never kept

A situation analogous to Karnataka had earlier arisen in Chhattisgarh. A leading subaltern caste figure was appointed Chief Minister, but an important Congressman, a refined gent from the well-educated aristocratic class, was evidently promised the second half of the Congress term. That ‘promise’ was never kept.

In the next Assembly election, the BJP trounced the Congress. It was fully prepared, unlike Karnataka BJP.

Also read: How VD Satheesan overcame the odds to make it to the Kerala CM post

Why the bitter defeat? The Congress government had given a reasonably good account of itself. There would of course be local dynamics at work, but tensions within the state Congress can hardly be ruled out.

In the recent Kerala case, where the Congress government was sworn in only a few days ago, it was interesting to see the general secretary in charge of the national Congress organisation throw his hat into the ring for Chief Minister. Until recently, this individual had been secretary to the former Congress president, much in the same way as the late Ahmed Patel had been to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and subsequently Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Patel could do back and forth in political time and knew the inner, complex, workings of his own party and its units in the states, including those holding the reins of office, and knew the wheels within wheels that are at work. Patel had thwarted then-BJP president Amit Shah’s designs in Gujarat by getting elected to the Rajya Sabha in the teeth of opposition from Shah.

As a key aide to the top Congress leadership, would Patel have been a contender for Chief Minister at any time in his long innings, even if the Congress could bid for power in Gujarat, as it nearly did in 2017? The idea is unthinkable except in circumstances that are dire. The reason is that the position Patel held was one in which no replacement can be asked to simply step in.

Top leadership needs to be strong

In the final analysis, the travails of the Congress will be attributable to its leadership. There is no use trying to put too fine a point on it. The national leadership is strong when the state units are strong; there is no other way.

And when the top leadership is strong, it commands the attention of its legislators in the states and in Parliament, and the high command is for real. This broad principle stood the test of time right up to the period of Indira Gandhi, after whom the party organisation began to decline.

That’s too long a story to get into here. But at the core is the elective leadership principle. When district and state units and the AICC are rooted in proper elections, then the elected national leadership automatically commands nationwide authority in the party as well as outside of it. Otherwise, the whole thing looks a bit unreal.

When the party wins a state election, the national leadership sends its observers to see that elected legislators choose their leader after carefully weighing the situation in its entirety and not by striking halfway house compromises that can never be brought to fruition, as we saw in Chhattisgarh and as can be seen in the uneasy state of affairs in the Congress in Karnataka.

It is hard for any local strongman to override the authority of elected top guns, for any such effort will carry heavy political costs. This is the real message.

Street actions

When there is seething discontent among the youth in the country on account of the NEET fiasco, rising unemployment, galloping prices, and adopting a foreign policy of fear and subservience to dominant world players, especially the US, the Congress leadership is unable to mount real pressure, which means street actions in all parts of the country within the bounds of the legal framework.

Mere statements from on high, no matter how pithy, apt or catchy, just don’t cut it. And in the country’s complex polity in the face of a major and entrenched government party, the best deals in alliance-making can only be obtained on the basis of organisational strength, not inner desires.

Fascist, regional, caste, or personality-based parties have convenient elections. Until the disarray of the recent era, a democratic party such as the Congress had untrammelled factional competition but elections through a proper democratic channel. That gave it social, political and even cultural gravitas.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas, or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)