Congress presidency: Cosmetic makeover cannot bring change

The problem isn't that the party is run by the family, but that in people's eyes, Rahul Gandhi is unsuitable for the prime ministerial chair

An ill-suited medicine could be worse than the disease, and if the cause or prognosis is grossly inaccurate, it can harm more. It would seem the Congress party currently suffers from such a malaise.

It also seems that some have told Rahul Gandhi that the Congress is suffering for being a family show. So he decided to open the party presidency for the leaders outside of the family. The advisers must have agreed that now that it is being done, it should be done with fanfare.

However, it will not absolve the party from the charges of being a family-based one. It has earned the tag from the 1970s onwards. However, Indira Gandhi was not the party president until 1977, although she was the be-all and end-all of the party. From 1978, when she was out of power, Indira Gandhi became the party's president, and for the next 13 years, she or her son Rajiv Gandhi held the post.

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Voters returned the Congress thrice to power (1980, 1984, and 1991) in those days, and it missed the throne in 1989 because the so-called secular parties joined hands with the so-called communal BJP, taking a leaf out of the book of 1977.

So, it is not that a Gandhi at the party's helm is detrimental to the existence of Congress. Rather it helps the party to keep the flock together, particularly in the states. Again, it is not so that the Congress would allow any anti-Gandhi to take charge of the party.

Even Mahatma Gandhi did not allow it in pre-independent India. Mahatma Gandhi was Congress president only once (in 1924), but his writ used to be the last word in the selection of Congress president. Only one person won, going against his writ, Subhas Chandra Bose (in 1939), whom Gandhi then forced to resign.

Currently, there is no Bose in the Congress, and even if the Gandhis do not take up the top post, they will control it. If some independent-minded leader were to get elected president and start working independently, he would face the same fate as Bose.

Also Read — After Gehlot snub, a change in Congress's top picks?

So, the presidency going out of the Gandhi circle will not change anything on the ground but will create a bouquet of problems. The Rajasthan crisis that erupted just after the news spread of Ashok Gehlot being the family's nominee for the top Congress post and Sachin Pilot replacing him as the state chief minister is just one aspect of the problem.

Rajasthan is one of the few states where the Congress is in power and has successfully existed as the main rival to the BJP. So, the dominant regional satrap of the party is unsurprisingly not prepared to lose his advantage over the opponent within the party.

Even if a loyal senior leader like Gehlot becomes the party president, otter complexities will pop up. There can be communication gaps between the Gandhis and the loyal president, as the latter will have to react instantly to sudden developments. But the Gandhis may not approve of all such reactions.

Coming back to the point of the disease and the cure, it is not that people are not voting for the Congress as the Gandhis hold its presidency. On the contrary, the Congress has not lost the sheen because the Gandhis lead the party. All those who still vote for the Congress have no qualms about a Gandhi at the party's helm.

But the people, in general, are not voting for the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections because they do not have confidence in Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate.

So, a fundamental change will come if someone else from the Congress is projected as the PM candidate. It does not matter whether they are from the family, so Priyanka Gandhi can be tried first. If it does not work, the party will have to find another suitable face.

There will still be a real possibility of two centres of power denting the government's image. We may remember how Rahul Gandhi tore off the draft of a bill prepared by the Manmohan Singh government and how the latter had to retract it ignominiously. However, the problem can be solved by forming a party-government coordination committee.

What is being contemplated now is a cosmetic makeover that will not serve any purpose. However, no one in the Congress will be able to spell out the real problem, proving why the presidency hullabaloo is just a wrong prescription that may give birth to avoidable problems for the ailing party.

(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a journalist and author based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.