An existential crisis

IT'S a telling comment on India's Congress party that a four-member committee it appointed in October to devise a strategy to rejuvenate it has turned out a non-starter because its members couldn't decide who should head it.

Even after the Congress's rout in Delhi and bye-lections elsewhere, few leaders are willing to blame its top leadership.

Former ministers Jairam Ramesh and Kishore Chandra Deo have voiced grave concern at the inner-party turbulence. Ramesh says the Congress's crisis isn't only electoral, but "existential": "We have lost huge ground. We are no longer a premium product. Congress is now a deep-discount bond…"

This acknowledgment would mark a big step forward if it ends the Congress's smugness. Its steep decline from 206 to 44 Lok Sabha seats doesn't reflect a tactical error or communication failure, but its disconnect from the people.

Ramesh wishfully thinks the Aam Aadmi Party won Delhi's stunning victory because it ran away with "Rahul Gandhi's platform": "The lessons to be learnt are door-to-door campaigning, bringing new faces and… empathy with the people…accessibility and visibility of leadership… We have to be less arrogant …"

Deo blames "rootless wonders and spineless creepers" and says things wouldn't have been so dismal had Gandhi fulfilled "half the promises made after he became vice-president." Deo too urges Rahul and Priyanka to "emancipate" the Congress.

This tactically-focused analysis misses a vital point. The Congress's crisis is multi-dimensional: a crisis of ideological identity, a programmatic crisis, a crisis of political strategy, an organisational crisis, and a leadership crisis. They together get reflected in poor alliance-making, incoherent campaigning, and electoral losses.

The Congress isn't what it was in its heyday: a multi-class and caste, broadly Left-leaning, umbrella-like party with roots in trade-unions and numerous associations. Many poor people could then identify with its "growth-with-equity" slogan.

In the 1970s, the party's base splintered. The Other Backward Classes and Dalits gravitated towards regional outfits like the Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Bahujan Samaj Party. The Congress went into deep decline in the late 1980s. It returned to national power in 2004 on a thinner base, without a committed subaltern constituency.

The Congress has since refashioned itself as a party committed to growth without equity, which pursues neoliberal policies favourable to predatory private capital. The Manmohan Singh dispensation catered to a largely upper-middle class urban constituency and rural upper castes.

It tried, feebly, to cultivate some poor sections through rights-based programmes like the Public Distribution System for food, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Education—meant to compensate them for the deprivations suffered under neoliberal policies.

Such "compensatory neoliberalism" was soon curtailed. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance-II negated the programmes' positive effects by assaulting the rights of the poor to water, forests and land by handing over natural resources to corporations.

This substantially lost the Congress the support of the poor. It turned to the middle class, competing with the Bharatiya Janata Party by diluting environmental regulations and making tax concessions to business. In December 2013, Rahul placated an apex chamber of commerce by boasting that he had sacked an environment minister who delayed clearances.

Cultivating business at the expense of vulnerable people won't help the Congress. To regain relevance, it must take up agendas of social and ecological justice and expanded civil, political and economic rights for the underprivileged.

AAP's Delhi sweep proves how compellingly attractive these agendas remain even for this relatively prosperous region, whose per capita income is seven times higher than Bihar's. Delhi's greatest lesson is the crucial importance of a poor-centred coalition and grassroots mobilisation.

The result demolishes the theory that India's poor have become so "aspirational"—and so convinced of the justness of existing social arrangements—that they don't want subsidies.

Indian society remains hideously unequal, hierarchical and prejudiced against the powerless, with extremely low social mobility. So affirmative action, affordable healthcare and education, and social security are absolutely imperative. The Congress has forgotten this.

Today's Congress has got its ideology and policy-thrust all wrong. Correcting this means cleansing the party of pro-corporate leaders like Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and others, and embracing a Left-leaning perspective.

It also means democratising the Congress, and freeing it of one-family dependence—no matter how able and charismatic its leaders. As it happens, Rahul isn't astute or charismatic. He arrogantly presumes that the Congress can win elections without alliances in the Hindi heartland.

That's why he broke up the Congress alliance with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-RJD last year, and handed the state on a platter to the BJP. He did this earlier in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, without comprehending the prevalent social or political equations.

Earlier, Gandhi tried to rebuild the Congress organisation through the Youth Congress by holding elections. Most posts were captured by the children of Congress bandicoots using money power.

There's no easy way out of the Congress's crisis. But it can only be revived and made viable on a Left-of-Centre platform, the space for which has expanded thanks to the BJP's growth. It would be a historic blunder to squander this opportunity.

The writer is an eminent Indian columnist.