The Congress and the CPI(M) have just concluded their analyses of electoral performance – the first via a limited exercise relating only to U.P. and presided over by the party’s heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi and latter in a more elaborate manner. However, the outcome was the same. Neither probed deep enough to ascertain the real causes of their failures, preferring instead to confine themselves to generalities.
In the CPI(M)’s case, some of the assessments were more reflective of inner-party differences than an unbiased look at what went wrong. For instance, the party’s defeat in West Bengal was ascribed to “mistakes” in the land acquisition policy. Yet, anyone familiar with the state knows that the “mistakes” were only the tip of the iceberg. Behind them were years of high-handed behaviour by the cadres, which was characterized as “arrogance” by the CPI leader, A.B. Bardhan, soon after the setback.
But, there was no hint in the CPI(M)’s resolution that it recognized this flaw. Instead, the attempt was to pass the buck on the person responsible for the supposedly mistaken policy, the former chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, whose repeated absence from the party’s conclaves could not be due to poor health alone.
True, Bhattacharjee evidently believed that any opposition to the acquisition of land in Singur and Nandigram could be eliminated by letting loose the cadres on the protesters while the police looked on – a familiar spectacle of an unholy partnership for the state’s hapless citizens. In fact, politburo member Brinda Karat exhorted the party to let the cadres give a dose of what was known as Dum Dum dawai or medicine, which indicated taking the law into their own hands.
But, for once, these brutal tactics did not work. However, for the CPI(M) to admit the use of muscle power as a political ploy would have been to let the cat out of the bag by exposing the secret that its long stint in power inWest Bengalwas not based only on the support of the underprivileged. It would far easier to blame the absentee former chief minister.
Even the point raised by several West Bengal delegates that the withdrawal of support from the Manmohan Singh government in 2008 had consolidated the Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance to the CPI(M)’s detriment was brushed aside although the Left’s decline, which made Amartya Sen say that the communists have lost their voice, stems from that episode.
If the CPI(M) was unwilling to undertake an honest reappraisal of its policies, so was the Congress. As always, the blame for the party’s defeat in UP was ascribed to organizational deficiencies. But, there was a deafening silence about the primary cause – the fact that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was losing its charisma and the party its ideology.
As a quintessential mass-based party, the Congress hasn’t depended on its organization so much as on the popular appeal of its leaders, belonging mainly to the party’s first family. The organizational infrastructure had followed the “wave” created by the photogenic leaders instead of preceding it. Whether it was Jawaharlal Nehru or Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, the surging crowds at their rallies galvanized the Congress’s grassroots workers. But, even without them, the party would have still won because, as was said during the early years of independence, the people would vote for a lamppost with a Congress flag.
And the reason for the party’s popularity was the clarity of its outlook. In Nehru’s case, it was the establishment of a secular democracy and industrial progress – “the dams are the temples of modern India”. In Indira’s time, it was the liberation of Bangladesh and the pledge to eradicate poverty – garibi hatao. For Rajiv, it was, first, the image of Mr Clean and then the promise to take the country into the 21st century.
Unfortunately, this lucidity is missing where Sonia and Rahul are concerned. Not only that, their seeming preference for Indira’s faux socialism via the hugely expensive welfare measures like the rural employment scheme and food security bill, which undermine fiscal disciple, is at odds with Manmohan Singh’s market-driven policies.
Yet, theirs is a covert ideology, for the mother-son duo do not openly advocate a return to the Congress’s 1955 Avadi line of establishing a “socialistic pattern of society”, but function from behind the scene with the help of courtiers like Jairam Ramesh and Mani Shankar Aiyar. The fallout is economic stagnation, for Manmohan Singh does not have the gumption, or the political weight, to push through his own line.
Besides, it isn’t only the confusion at the top which left the voters flummoxed, but also the growing uncertainty about the party’s core ideologies caused by the crass wooing of the Muslim vote by Salman Khurshid, Digvijay Singh, Beni Prasad Verma and others, and the playing of the caste card by trying to separate the MBCs (most backward castes) from the OBCs and the non-Jatav Daits from the Jatavs to undermine the BSP’s base of support. It is these cynical tactics which led to the Congress’s fall. (IPA Service)
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