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Tried and tested in the Congress

The more the Congress changes, the more it remains the Grand Old Party steeped in its past. Belying the buzz preceding the event, the revamp of the All-India Congress Committee turned out to be a tame affair — a few names dropped, a few added, but little by way of a plan, much less a new direction. The lost opportunity is made more glaring by the advantageous position in which the Congress finds itself. The party is in power, and comfortably, thanks to the unedifying state of the principal Opposition party. The insecurities of the first year — coalition doubts, threat of a third front, and so forth — are largely behind it. The United Progressive Alliance has held together without too much effort. Above all, the Congress has at the helm a leader whose iconic status within the party makes her quite the best candidate to reform the moribund organisation. There was much talk in party circles of elections to the Congress Working Committee — the highest decision-making body. Yet in a party given to leader worship and sycophancy, inner-party democracy can only be a false alarm. As much is borne out by history. Narasimha Rao held elections to the CWC in 1992 after an interregnum of two decades. Barely did the applause die down when he secured the resignation of the elected members and nominated them to the body. In 1997, Sitaram Kesri seemingly accomplished the impossible with the election to the CWC of 10 members. A year later, Kesri was himself to exit in ignominy — such was the clamour for the induction of Ms. Gandhi.

What explains the reluctance to foster inner-party democracy among politicians who are happy to participate in the larger democratic process, taking victory and defeat in their stride? The paradox is not unique to the Congress. Internal elections are a formality as much in the non-dynastic Bharatiya Janata Party as they are in the mostly personality-driven regional parties. Yet in the absence of internal elections, the legitimacy of the leader cannot but be in some doubt. Ms. Gandhi's pulverising 2000 victory against Jitendra Prasada (she secured 7448 votes to Prasada's 94) made her the undisputed number one in the Congress. Twenty months after the party's May 2004 electoral triumph and her stunning abnegation of office, Ms. Gandhi has grown further in stature, leading to the hope that she would insist upon an elected CWC — to energise the party as well as to rid it of dead wood. That she chose the safer path of nomination speaks to the strong internal resistance to elections. The same undemocratic urge explains the chorus in favour of Rahul Gandhi. It would have been perfectly in order for the young Gandhi to have contested and won a place in the CWC. But given the way the Congress thinks and works, his ceremonial induction — whether into the CWC or into the Union Cabinet — has to be necessarily to the accompaniment of an approving chorus.

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