Rajesh Ramachandran

The biggest burden for the Congress party is the liberal commentariat the partys well-wishers. After having sucked dry the old, creaky bones of the Congress favour-dispensing mechanism, suddenly the Well-Wishers Unlimited finds the Gandhi family distasteful, the party feudal, the old guard manipulative, the new guard inefficient; in short, it wants someone like Narendra Modi to run the Congress. Well, Sachin Pilots rebellion in Rajasthan has done a great favour to the Congress by exposing the ideological and moral hollowness of some of the leaders and supporters of the party. The so-called guardians of secularism, pluralism and diversity were ambivalent about a leader threatening to split the party with the help of the enemy.

In times when a section of political observers liberally uses the phrase undeclared emergency, this very group has showed no qualms about their friend trying to topple one of the few Opposition governments. After all, the leader in question was their darling, who wined and dined the opinion-makers among the Lutyens elite for over a decade. For them, it was only a case of a person like us a privileged, entitled dynast getting impatient and frustrated with a representative of the unwashed masses; and not a betrayal of ideals, which it really was. Opportunism is the key to success in Indian public life where political correctness, and not political morality, is all it takes for counterfeits to pass off as radical torchbearers.

Now that the Congress spokesperson has revealed the transcript of a purported conversation between a Union minister from the BJP and a former Rajasthan Congress minister, it is safe to assume that the Rajasthan rebellion has the tacit support of the BJP. Sachin Pilot thus emerges from this sordid drama as a rare specimen in Indian politics who, despite being the guardian of the party organisation in the state as Pradesh Congress Committee president and Deputy Chief Minister, plotted to bring his own government down with the help of the rival.

After the Rajasthan rebellion got triggered, it has been endlessly compared with the defection of Jyotiraditya Scindia and, in fact, he himself has made public utterances forcing observers to draw a parallel. But Scindia was not part of the Kamal Nath government, nor was he the head of the Madhya Pradesh unit of the party and, worse, he was not even being considered for a Rajya Sabha nomination. Pilots case is completely different. It was the Gandhi familys largesse and not Rajesh Pilots legacy that has brought Sachin where he is now. He was a member of the Lok Sabha at 26, a Union minister at 31, a PCC chief at 36 and a Deputy CM at 40. This career graph is the stuff dreams are made on. Yet, he is now accused of conspiring with the BJP to fulfil his ambition to become Chief Minister.

Probably, herein lies the real story of the rot within the Congress. It is a party of opportunists with a mix of inheritors and interlopers trying desperately to secure their place at the high table, with power and pelf as their prime driving force. And they are pitted against an organisation driven by ideology. Those who bemoan the debilitating failures of the Congress and blame the Gandhi family do not realise that the raison detre of the Gandhi family leadership is the faith reposed by the greatest opportunists in Indian politics on the only winning proposition they have. Like Pilot, they would all fly away at the first hint of an opportunity; and if they are not doing so, it only means that there is no option for them apart from the Gandhi family leadership.

Congress leaders talk ad nauseam about all the old leaders coming together to take on the BJP and throwing up a new national leadership and a prime ministerial alternative. They want NCPs Sharad Pawar, Trinamool Congress Mamata Banerjee, YSR Congress Jaganmohan Reddy and others to be brought together on a broad platform to revive the Congress wherever it is dead and to offer a real challenge to the BJP. But even this effort would need a leadership that can balance all the mighty egos, and neither Pawar nor Mamata has shown any inclination towards such a grand venture. So far, only the Congress leadership has been successful in forging alliances with some of these very leaders and hence to expect a Mamata or a Pawar to wave a magic wand to recreate the Congress of the 1980s is a needless distraction.

The worst aspect of the current crisis was the thoughtless abdication of his responsibility by Rahul Gandhi and the mother having to succeed the son. With the entire old guard remaining clueless and the newbies trying to fly away to greener pastures, the Congress leaders havent succeeded in their search for an alternative to the Gandhi family. Even a year after the second consecutive Lok Sabha poll debacle, all that the Generation-Next could think about was to defect to the BJP or topple its own governments. The new-generation Congress leaders seem to be more greedy and feudal than their predecessors, who always used the ruse of issues like corruption to trip their competitors within the party. Pilot could not even wait for Ashok Gehlot to commit a blunder or to expose a corruption scandal before proclaiming that he had split 30 MLAs, reducing his own government to a minority.

In this context, there isnt much for the Congress to hope for apart from keeping invested in the regional satraps, who have a mass base and a stake in the survival of the organisation. The Gehlots, Amarinders, Chavans, Hoodas, Chandys and other strongmen are still the best bet for the party, provided it has a full-time president who spends time in Parliament and its committees, and plans polls meticulously. Indian democracy badly needs an Opposition.

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The attack from within - The Tribune India