Why has Congress no worthy leaders?

The March 28 issue of the London-based The Economist carried an article on ten years of Sonia Gandhi’s leadership as President of the Congress Party. The article was illustrated with a picture of Madam under the caption: `Italy’s most successful politician.’

Italy’s, not India’s. That was a gratuitous insult not only to the Congress but to India especially. It is a crying shame that a nation of about 1.2 billion people has not been able to find a leader from among themselves, capable of heading India’s oldest political party and has to depend on an Italian who opted for Indian citizenship somewhat late in her life, almost, it seems, reluctantly.

Why has the Congress been unable to find a true-born Indian as President and that, too, for one long decade? Several reasons can be adduced. One is that by nature Indians have an in-born preference for dynastic rule and are comfortable with it. For centuries, it may be remembered, India was governed not by elected representatives but by rajas, maharajas, nawabs and zamindars.

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Another is that the party no longer attracts people of character who are willing to give their all for the sake of serving their motherland, as once they did in their thousands for a quarter century between 1920 and 1947. The party presently attracts only power seekers and sycophants of whom there are too many to count.

We don’t any longer have Rajendra Prasads, Rajagopalacharis, Bal Gangadhar Tilaks, Govind Vallabh Pants and B. C. Roya, not to speak of Subhash Chandra Boses and Jayaprakash Narayans, among the second generation of freedom fighters.

Sitaram Kesari was a joke and was understandably thrown out, with no immediate successor of national eminence and acceptability, available. Sonia Gandhi, in the circumstances fitted the Congress need nicely. Her position has now become unassailable. So one speaks of a Congress High Command, with just one Commander who is recognisable. There isn’t one individual in the party who can hold a candle to Lal Krishna Advani, leave alone Narendra Modi, men of substance who are leaders in their own right.

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Congress lost the elections to the Gujarat State Legislature and the BJP won with a massive mandate effortlessly, because it had a leader who represented the spirit of India. Name calling did not help Sonia Gandhi. In December 2007 the voters handed a handsome victory to the BJP in Himachal Pradesh, when many analysts had predicted that at best it may slide in with a bare majority.

None had forecast a clean sweep which the BJP managed so efficiently, to make? The BJP is now in power in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Uttarakand, not to speak of Gujarat. And its alliance partners rule in Orissa, Bihar, Punjab and Nagaland.

And consider what happened in the North East. In Nagaland, the Democratic Alliance headed by NeiphiuRio has assumed office. Its constituents, namely, the Nagaland People’s Party which won 26 seats, NCP (2), BJP (2) and Independents (6) account for 36 of the total of 60 seats. The Congress with 23 seats stands isolated. In Tripura, the CPM won 46 of the 60 seats, the party’s disastrous handling of Nandigram notwithstanding, and was returned to power for the fourth consecutive term. The Congress got a mere ten seats. In Meghalaya, as the media rightly noted, the Congress was catapulted to power by a Governor who bent rules to accommodate it.

Presently it is anybody’s guess how Karnataka will vote. Late in November 2007 when The Times of India did a survey across eleven cities, it found to nobody’s surprise that voters thought that the UPA government was doing an “average” job and that the sheen surrounding Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is `beginning to wear off’ and the proportion of those rating the government as `excellent’ had halved from 13 per cent in May 2007 to 6 per cent in November.

The Sunday Indian also carried a poll in March 2008 and that did not show the Congress in any better light. It showed that middle class and poor India is seething with anger at inflation and corruption and the Congress stands to lose, with Mayavati, being the `killing factor’ in the next Lok Sabha. It may be argued that some of the Indian newspapers are biased against the Congress, but what does The Economist have to say?

According to the Journal, despite several “grandstand schemes for the poor” and “a massive job creation scheme for rural paupers”, even if the party wins, “it will not be with an outright majority” and may fail to make a government. “This” said the Journal, “makes its revival look somewhat over-hyped, as indeed “is the slavish reverence of the party faithful for a dynastic leader whose Hindi remains dicey”.

The weekly granted that the Gandhi name may contain “an additional seductive whiff of nostalgia, but this will not make up for the party’s flaws, including lack of leadership in many states”. So where do we go from here?

The party has gone in for pacifying farmers, willing to pay off their debts to the tune of Rs. 60,000 crore. Never before in the history of India has there had been recourse to what can only be called legal bribery. The money does not come out of Congress pockets but from the tax-payers’ pockets. There should be henceforth a law which makes it illegal for a party in power to announce such brazen give-aways during its last year in power.

The Congress must be presently shivering in fright. A survey recently commissioned by the Congress Party about its electoral prospects, it is believed showed that it may not even touch 100 seats in the likely elections to the Lok Sabha either early next year or some time in December 2008 itself. BJP, the Principal Opposition Party, is reported to have fared better, getting seats within a range of 130 to 170. The NDA which is now showing signs of unity, in the circumstances, is likely to assume power in Delhi.

Of course, in politics, anything can happen and it would be folly on the part of the BJP to be complacent. But the cheap manner in which the Congress is taking on the BJP as in the endless harping on the subject of the highjacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar will take it nowhere. Sonia Gandhi should know that name-calling (as she indulged in at the time of the Gujarat assembly elections) can prove to be counter-productive. She is served very poorly by her advisers, whoever they are.

Currently what India needs are leaders with a high sense of moral purpose, but, sad to say, the Congress has none such. It had better indulge in some heart-searching, rather than trying to run down BJP leaders who have proved their credibility. Muck-raking and dirt-slinging never pays. This is a country which appreciates noble sentiments. This is India.

The views expressed in the article are the author’s and not of Sify.com.