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Wednesday, Feb 02, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Let the party begin

By Harish Khare

If the Congress leadership undertakes the task of organisational renewal, it could begin the larger process of reform of the entire party system.

ABOUT SIX years ago, the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, introduced a remarkably democratic innovation: the organisation was given a quasi-equivalent of the Election Commission of India. A central election authority was set up. Its first chairman was Ram Niwas Mirdha, a respected, distinguished and seasoned Congressman. He "conducted" the organisational polls in 2000 that saw the election of Ms. Gandhi as the party president. Mr. Mirdha stepped down last August and in his place Oscar Fernandes was appointed chairman. Mr. Fernandes is a Minister in the Manmohan Singh Government and is perhaps the only person to be exempted from the "one man, one post" principle. He is also an organisational man, an euphemism for the high command's yes-man.

There has been no explanation as to why Mr. Mirdha stepped down; nor is there any enlightenment on whether the party could not find someone other than a serving Cabinet Minister to head the central election authority in the spirit of Ms. Gandhi's institutional innovation. After all, the party's website claims that "the Congress is the only party with an independent election authority with the power and the responsibility for conducting regular party elections." At least in letter, the claim is credible as no other political party has yet found it worthwhile to follow the Congress precedent. Those political parties which conduct regular elections do so only as an experiment in controlled democracy.

The autonomy of the central election authority becomes relevant because the Congress is supposed to be in the midst of internal elections, though way behind the announced schedule. First it was the Lok Sabha polls that ensured a delay in the organisational election; later, it was this or that Assembly poll that distracted the party establishment from going through the motions of election. Admittedly, no incumbent political leader can be expected to put in place a hostile mechanism that would provide aid and comfort to his or her detractors; the irony, however, is that Ms. Gandhi today enjoys such unquestionable authority and respect within the Congress that there is really no need to pack the central election authority in order to ensure her re-election.

Indeed Ms. Gandhi's post-renunciation aura and prestige could have been used to convert the organisation election as an opportunity to initiate the process of the Congress renewal. In fact, political parties all over the world have available to them the device of internal organisations to reach out to the worker as well as to recruit new cadres, who in turn bring in new energy and new ideas. This was precisely what Mr. Mirdha had hoped for in October 2000: "Earlier the effort used to be on unity and consensus while the ordinary Congress worker was suppressed. But now he has a chance to come up. The new leadership so thrown up will be an unknown quantity." That did not happen; and once Ms. Gandhi was elected, the party did not even conduct the Working Committee elections. Instead, the party president was authorised to name the entire working committee.

The internal culture of the party did not change, with the result that the Congress has continued to lose ground especially in the Hindi heartland. The current organisational poll exercise has been redesigned into one of elaborate bargaining among, say, the top hundred odd Congress leaders, who are haggling over how many "district returning officers" each one of them gets assigned. Once a leader "gets" a district, he or she gets to determine as to who get "elected" as PCC delegates (who constitute the presidential electoral college), who in turn "elect" the AICC members (the electoral college for the Congress Working Committee). The role of the Chairman of the central election authority has been reduced to that of a facilitator of an amicable distribution of "districts" among senior pradesh leaders. Needless to add, only those leaders who choose not to exhibit any kind of dissent get "DROs" of their choice.

Consequently, a mutually dependent relationship between the leader and the "leaders" flourishes at the expense of organisational vitality. The incumbent "leaders" continue to maintain their lien over the party's organisation at the pradesh level without having to bother about the ordinary worker; collectively, the party has no incentive to open itself up to the newly aspirant and ambitious social groups and individuals who find the Congress a closed shop but continue to find it easy to make an entree in any regional party. This DRO-centric approach also renders entirely inconsequential the party's "membership drive"; whether members are genuinely recruited or the old-familiar "bogus membership" virus reasserts itself, the "members" have no impact on determining the party hierarchy at any level. And the "leaders", in turn, have no legitimacy to insist on any kind of internal debate or dialogue or accountability.

The collective disinclination to experiment with a reasonable dose of genuine elections is inexplicable because the Congress finds itself in a historically happy situation. Ever since Ms. Gandhi declined to assume the prime ministerial chair, there is an aura of moral authority to her leadership; not since 1984 when the party won 400 plus Lok Sabha seats has any Congress president elevated himself/herself way above any other leader. She has repaid all her debts to all those who once schemed and laboured on her behalf. The hope was — and remains — that Ms. Gandhi would use her new moral authority to reshape the Congress into a modern party organisation. The process cannot even begin unless the party leadership sends out unmistakable signals that it wants to re-align the Congress with the realities of a changed India.

Again for the first time since 1980, the party finds itself experimenting with a new arrangement whereby the Congress president is not heading the Government. In practical terms, the Congress president is not burdened with the taxing and consuming task of running the Government; while this arrangement distracts somewhat from the Prime Minister's authority, it nonetheless leaves the Congress president free to concentrate on organisational matters. This means a unique opportunity for Ms. Gandhi to use her prestige and power to mount an all-out effort to develop the party's organisational muscles and stamina.

This undertaking can only be a long-term project. But a beginning can be made by making "party work" as prestigious and as fulfilling as being Cabinet Ministers at the Centre or in the States. The Congress president can find the words and the gestures to empower — politically and emotionally — those who get involved with the organisational work, be he a general-secretary of the AICC or a humble worker at the taluka level. However, this project cannot take off unless the organisational polls are devised in a manner as to make the Congress a platform open to all sections of society.

The task of the Congress renewal is no less urgent or less relevant today just because the party has managed to lead an alliance to power at the Centre; or just because its principal rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, happens to be in such disarray. The organisational dysfunctionalities that have cropped up over the years have not been repaired. Though the AICC establishment continues to stage events meant to showcase the party president's leadership, there is little the organisation is inclined to engage itself with society and its discontents and dreams. All said and done, the party has got reduced to an electoral machine through which individuals who call themselves "Congressmen" retain their public persona and all the advantages that accrue to them on account of that persona. Ms. Gandhi has a historic opportunity to change all that.

As the largest and the oldest political party, the Congress is at the centre of the party system in India. The role of a political party was defined long ago by Jawaharlal Nehru. To a Congress convention at Nagpur in 1950, Panditji observed: "Another reason why the Congress should continue to function is that the Government cannot achieve much unless the people cooperated, and the Congress alone can create enthusiasm among the people to cooperate." Obvious but the message's import has got diluted over the years.

Ideas, policies and initiatives need to be explained to the people and popular support garnered for the government of the day. This task can be attended to only by an ideologically charged and organisationally-driven party. If the Congress leadership undertakes the task of organisational renewal, it could begin the larger process of reform of the entire party system. There can be no healthy democratic polity without a morally defensible party system.

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