Leadership woes in Cong exposed

‘Comprehensively destroyed’, remarked senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad in his parting shot at the party he had helped build in the past five decades as he walked out of the Congress on Friday taking aim at the Gandhis and Rahul Gandhi in particular, blaming him for ‘the culture of sycophancy’ which has wrecked the party in no mean measure.

Azad’s five-page letter has several points which would find resonance in many a Congressman’s heart. He dubs the internal polls which will lead to the election of a new Congress President ‘a sham’ and sarcastically remarks that decisions in the party are now being made by security guards and PAs. He refers to a coterie which runs the party and wonders if the Congress deserves this in the 75th year of India’s independence for which party members of yesteryears made untold sacrifices.

 Azad was a member of the G-23, a rebel thinktank in the Congress which includes stalwarts like Manish Tiwari and Shashi Tharoor, who acted as a pressure group to make the leadership (read the Gandhis) see reason whenever issues of prime importance needed to be debated and decisions taken. Another group member, Kapil Sibal, has already exited the party while Anand Sharma has quit a crucial poll panel indicating that he is keeping his options open.

 As for his future plans, Azad says he will go to Jammu and Kashmir and form his own party while checking on the national possibilities later. Some Congressmen claim Azad was piqued after being denied a Rajya Sabha seat while other aver that his DNA has been ‘Modified’-an allusion to his proximity to PM Modi who has made no secret of his fondness for him. There are many leaders-some even senior to Azadwho have quit the party and gone on to form their own outfits. The Congress has moved on despite these desertions and will do so in the future too despite the doomsday prophesies predicting an imminent collapse, but aren’t there lessons to be learnt when a seasoned Congressman like Azad lets loose a diatribe against an organisation which took him to the heights of his political career?

The fact that the party has been losing poll after poll and is now in power in only two states (and sharing power in two others) goes to prove that this is no longer the mighty force which swept away the British empire. There are inherent weaknesses which have been eating away at its vitals-and the foremost one is of leadership-a mature, sensible, democratic and fair leadership which appeals to every party worker. In fact with the right kind of leadership, there is no reason why the Congress should not regain the magical influence it wielded on the masses a decade ago, being the only national party other than the BJP to have its adherents in every mohalla and town.

And if Rahul Gandhi is reluctant to take over the reins of the party, there are many others who can do an equally good job provided they are given the opportunity to make it to the top. The run-up to the election of the Congress president in September, is therefore an extremely crucial phase for the party-when it will have to resolve the leadership issue which seems to be the only hurdle stopping it from getting even with the BJP at the national level. Congressmen have been fervently hoping for the arrival of their ‘messiah’ for too long and if it does not happen now, the list of exits will only grow longer in the days to come.