Fall and fall of Congress

A cloud of weary sadness washes over me as I begin writing this piece. Not that I am enamoured of Congress or its Gandhi dynasts at all but the steady - almost irremediable decline - into irrelevance of this old behemoth  that cradled and led our freedom movement is surely a cause for national worry. Has it lost its moorings? Has some evil curse befallen it? Have Cleopatra’s dreadful ‘snakes’ sniffed and stung its body, heart and soul? Have its old sins of omission and commission come home to roost and rendered it a zombie beyond redemption? What sort of (Trypanosomial) ‘sleeping sickness’ has overwhelmed it? Could it be that the ‘Gandhis’ are scared crazy that once they relinquish hold, they will lose the political heft required to fend off the ED/IT hounds? Is it just ‘santaan-moh’ (filial affection), or does Sonia Gandhi reckon that if she quits, the party will fall apart for want of a commanding force? Whatever it may be, should we then write it off? How is it that even after suffering serial electoral reverses, no lessons are learnt? Some noises, some ambiguous statements, some phony assurances, some superficial churnings and soon the party limps back into its shell of inertia and lassitude. Why?  Is Sonia so dumb or naïve to let things drift by so disastrously? For the befuddled me it is a mystery wrapped in a puzzle!

Shedding their long-endured diffidence, the G-23 was born. But its rumbles of protest were brushed aside and even frowned upon by the lady Supremo and her coterie. Even Prashant Kishor’s 600-slide strategic blueprint was given an earful only to be dumped later into the Delhi’s not-so-clean Jamuna. Then came the Chintan Shivir. I thought it would be a fruitful brain storming exercise from which a buoyant, energized Congress would be re-born imbued with the old pre-Indira Gandhi-era idealism and vigour; a party with a refreshingly new narrative aimed at heralding a new dawn of smiling, resurgent Bharatvarsh; a Congress battle-ready to take on the hurtling juggernaut of the BJP spewing authoritarian fire; a party acting as a well-oiled opposition arousing public consciousness by  hammering questions and seeking answers on serious issues like, say, China’s “alarming” incursions; deepening communal divide; Pegasus; Panama papers, Pandora files and black money amounting to trillions; prices, electoral bonds… An opposition that smothers the ruling party’s swagger and rhetoric with the dazzling sunshine of fact and logic, not by angry shouts.

Sadly, nothing of the sort happened. The shivir too ended up as a cosmetic exercise, to let the status quo prevail, the dynasty retain its stranglehold, and the old sores of ambiguity and inertia fester.

Surely the Congress has sane, scholarly heads in its ranks to shine the light and show the way. Why can’t the Jai Ram Rameshes and Shashi Tharoors act bold, exert and stir up the Congress high command into affirmative action? Don’t they realize that a moribund Congress is bad news not just for the party but also for the nation? A parliament without strong opposition is an affront to democracy and imperils the cherished values of liberty and individual freedom. 

With the AAP flattering to deceive, other regional parties lacking the organizational depth at the national level, the Congress had it in it to rise from the ashes as it were and bestride the political landscape as a unifying umbrella force. But seeing how it bungled up the recent allotment of Rajya Sabha tickets even, I, for one, see no hope. Sad.

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