Infusing New Life Into The Congress Party

Congress President Mallikarjuna Kharge’s call to partymen to cast away the deadwood and make room for younger leaders has not come a day too soon. While addressing the party’s newly constituted steering committee, Kharge talked about bringing in more accountability for the leaders at all levels of the organisation and asked if the party in-charges spend 10 days a month in the states assigned to them.

He signalled that the party would be taking up soaring inflation, record unemployment, concentration of wealth in a few chosen hands, the deliberate subversion of constitutional institutions, and the premeditated attempt to delegitimise the judiciary and the Chinese incursion as raging issues. A first of its kind ever since the party was displodged from the power saddle at the Centre, the meeting is seen as a serious effort to take stock of the party’s standing and status.

The party has also announced holding the plenary of the All India Congress Committee in Raipur (Chhattisgarh) in the second half of February 2023. The meeting on Sunday comes close on the heels of election of Mr Kharge as the new President of the party on October 26. It is viewed as the first attempt to revamp the party amidst the ongoing ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, first of its kind of outreach initiative.

Though Kharge’s call sounds pertinent, nothing came off by way of explanation for the listless campaign by the party for Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. Plausibly, the party has already conceded Gujarat to the Bharatiya Janata Party and sought to reserve its energy for the future battles on the electoral turf in several states in the year ahead. While the party is entitled to hold its cards close to its chest, the desertions of senior leaders from the party—Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, Amarinder Singh, Sunil Jhakar et al—in the last few months bear the telltale evidence of serious degeneration of the party from within.

The procrastination in matters of holding the party election, failure to engage with G-23 group leaders for nearly two years, shunning of leaders like Shashi Tharoor, open infighting within the party in Rajasthan, mismanagement of the organization in Punjab ahead of Assembly polls, point to the flawed approach towards managing the Grand Old Party of India. The Party is yet to realise the paradigm shift in Indian politics where the axis has turned full circle in favour of a political party, namely the BJP, thanks to the dedicated cadres of the RSS backing it.

The Congress machinery seems rusted and its leaders lackluster when juxtaposed with a master orator like Narendra Modi. Besides, the party’s social media presence is simply no match to the well-oiled propaganda machine of the BJP shooting out salvos without a pause. The Congress would need to take a deeper look at issues that bother people, expose fakery and gimmickry that is being bandied about in the name of welfare schemes and should call the bluff of the ruling dispensation on the price and employment front. It would need enthusiastic, young leaders to enthuse the rank and file of the party languishing on the margins of the polity