Kharge's challenges as the Congress president

In more than one way, 80-year-old Mallikarjun Kharge will prove lucky for Congress. Counting votes is on October 19, but it seems all but certain Kharge will be the new Congress president. His election as the party president could help bury the dynasty tag on the party. His election itself signals that the grand old party has ultimately put on the thinking cap to regain the lost primacy in the Indian polity.

Only time will tell how much he will succeed, but the strategy to have a non-Gandhi to head the party seems to be working if one were to view it in the context of how the contest has panned out.

The contest between a phlegmatic Kharge and the flamboyant Shashi Tharoor has already sent the message that the party is more than alive despite campaigns of 'Congress mukt Bharat' for a long by the high and mighty.

Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra has helped the party realise the tremendous goodwill it still enjoys among the people. It is for the party to see how best it could be converted into support for it, given that its apparatus has grown old and has fallen into disuse by the all-pervading nomination culture in the organisation for the past few decades.

There are no easy answers, as all the questions Congress faces are difficult. The earlier the new president sets in order the Congress' house, the better it would be. A plus factor for Kharge is that he enjoys tremendous confidence with the Gandhis. At the same time, he knows the responsibility entrusted to him with the election and what he needs to do. So it is the test for Kharge right from the word go.

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Despite his age, Kharge's dedication and stamina will likely get him the new job, not to mention his loyalty. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were witnesses to the fact that Kharge, Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha in the last House, had worked gruelling hours to keep the opposition flag flying. Though not a great orator like Tharoor, Kharge had learnt how to communicate his point effectively to embarrass the government. He was the natural choice for being the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha. The post was being coveted by the likes of P Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh.

The issues 66-year-old Tharoor has raised in the campaign would benefit Kharge as he embarks on setting the house in order. In various ways, Tharoor has emphasised one fact boldly: change is the only constant. If you fail to change with the times, you are dead.

At no time in independent India had the Congress faced such a crisis as it has been facing for the past decade, especially since the emergence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the national scene in May 2014.

Congress losses have been endless since then. The crisis is multi-dimensional. Loss of power at the Centre. The debacle in two successive Lok Sabha elections. Failure to even become a recognised principal opposition party, humiliating defeats in several states, especially Uttar Pradesh, the defeat of Rahul Gandhi in the pocket borough of Amethi in May 2019, the party becoming virtually dead in UP, regional parties becoming more assertive, the BJP losing no chance to further marginalise the Congress by hook or crook, including pulling down some of its governments.

The Congress crisis is also because of the failure of the leadership to evolve a foolproof strategy to take on Modi. It has failed to understand how to neutralise the relentless polarisation agenda of the BJP and its aggressive propaganda machine. A section of the opposition alleges that Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah are blurring the lines between the party and the State, which is why detractors of the BJP are facing the ire of investigative agencies like the ED, CBI and Income Tax.

Kharge is taking over at a time when a fatigue factor is developing for the NDA dispensation, which has been at the helm for eight long years. A section of people feels that little has changed on the ground, notwithstanding tall claims and grandiose announcements.

The new party chief has to race against time, given that a dozen Assembly polls are scheduled in the next 17 months before the next Lok Sabha elections. They include the Himachal Assembly polls, which have already been announced and the one in Gujarat, the home turf of Modi-Shah, scheduled by December. The election in Jammu and Kashmir, the first since the state was turned into Union Territory, is expected in the next six months. Karnataka, Telangana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh will have polls next year.

So challenges galore for the Congress and its new chief. The first and foremost challenge is to inject fresh blood at every level and junk the much-abused nomination culture that has turned the oldest political organisation into a laggard.

The series of Assembly elections, especially in Gujarat, is keenly watched. The number of times and days the PM visits his home state and stays there tells its own story. It speaks of the uneasiness in the BJP camp. The PM's remarks on his last visit, in which he asked party workers to be alert as the Congress was doing silent campaigning against the BJP, showed that things are not as good as the pliant media are offering them.

The world knows that Kharge was not the first choice of the Gandhis as the successor to Sonia Gandhi, who has created a record of sorts for being at the helm for nearly a quarter of a century. The developments in Jaipur that resulted in the Rajasthan CM bowing out of the contest for the top party post before it began ushered in Kharge at the last minute. But luck could smile on Kharge if 2024 throws up a hung Lok Sabha. In 1996, a hung Lok Sabha had brought the then Karnataka CM H D Deve Gowda as the PM heading the United Front government.

(The authors are senior journalists)