Congress Still to Pick Itself Up

NEW DELHI: The Congress is striving hard to make the grade but the eyeballs are all with Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose mega event in Australia had 24 hour news coverage, while Congress president Sonia Gandhi struggled for space with her international conference in the heart of Delhi to observe former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary.

Modi, with his usual elan, spoke at great length focusing on his cleanliness drive, some sops for Persons of Indian Origin, and of course about Gandhi and his messages to the world. Sonia Gandhi spoke of secularism and Nehru, but seemed to have forgotten Gandhi in her speech “There can be no Indianness, no India without secularism….secularism was and remains more than an ideal. It is a compelling necessity for a country as diverse as India,” she said.

Interestingly, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee who was present at the event along with other leaders was seated next to CPI MP D.Raja. The Left, Janata Dal(U), Janata Dal(S), Nationalist Congress party were all represented at the Congress meet. The Tamil parties were absent, as were the two regional parties, National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party from Jammu and Kashmir.

The Congress, despite the good turn out for its international conference, is still struggling with itself. Party leaders insist that movement forward will be visible after the budget session next year, although many unofficially admit that the entire organisation needs to be re-vamped and a beginning has still to be made. The disillusionment with Rahul Gandhi as a ‘leader’ is deep set but an alternative is not visible for the Congress leaders who admit that the party needs a direction.

Secularism is a plank that the party has taken up, and in the recent violence around Delhi some of its leaders visited the resettlement colonies and promised help. In fact it was the only opposition party to intervene in Trilokpuri, but this was a minimalist effort that was not replicated in the other affected areas. Congress scion Rahul Gandhi who is mostly indoors did not visit the colonies.

Former defence minister A.K.Antony perhaps takes the lead in insisting that the Congress will “come back in five years.” His approach has always been the line of least resistance, echoed by many in the party as a “wait and watch approach.” Sources said that the Congress president seems to have also been persuaded that the strategy should be to sit back and do nothing, at least for now. The result is that no effort is being made to revive the sagging party organisation at the central level, strengthen the state units and the front organisations, and chalk out a program of action at the district levels across the country.

The frustration is visible even in senior leaders who are no longer willing to discuss the party. “What is there to say, nothing is happening,” a senior Congress leader told The Citizen. He said he could speak about his constituency but certainly not for the party. When pressed he added, “nothing is happening, when it does ….well let us see.”