<p>Finally, after many missteps in political calculus and thousands of footsteps of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, something is stirring in the Congress. It's making enough news for the BJP and the on-leash TV channels to do an obsessive nightly nit-picking of each step (and misstep) of the party they say has no future in India. When the anchors can't find a Muslim-inspired topic, they quickly shift to picking holes in the Congress. In a perverse way, that's good news for the party.</p>.<p>As we head towards the polls for president of the Congress, one could say that the process in itself is good for the health of Indian democracy, and we should be grateful for small mercies. First, in democratic India, we will actually see a contest of sorts for the post of a party president, and in the Congress, for the first time after 20 years without a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the fray.</p>.<p>Yes, the first family is apparently believed to be on the side of one candidate, in this instance, the veteran Mallikarjun Kharge, so it's not likely to be quite like the recent "real" contest for leadership of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. But in India, where parties are run by families, charismatic individual leaders or the RSS, it's still better than not having a contest.</p>.<p>The former Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, would win according to most estimates, but three-term MP Shashi Tharoor too could emerge a winner even in defeat. He's begun a charming campaign with the hashtag #ThinkTomorrowThinkTharoor and has said that there's a need to see "something" happen in the Congress and that elections can galvanise interest in a party that's gone through rough years, losing 39 of the last 45 elections. Reportedly, the members of the Gandhi family also believe so and see the elections as an occasion to showcase the party and create a narrative as opposed to responding to one.</p>.<p>If that's a goal as it should be, Tharoor, as the challenger, does engage the younger generation of urban India, among whom he is wildly popular. Have a Tharoor event on any campus, and it would be a house full and overflowing. There's something about the former diplomat's articulation that fascinates young aspirational India. There is a critique that he's not a mass leader connected to the Hindi belt, but then who in the Congress remains so in an era when, in the last general election, Rahul Gandhi too lost from Uttar Pradesh?</p>.<p>Rahul Gandhi is an MP from Kerala from where Tharoor has won three Lok Sabha elections. It's the state that gave the Congress its largest chunk of MPs in 2019. Tharoor's debating skills are superb; he has 8.3 million followers on Twitter and is just a good face to put out there for a party seeking to connect with an aspirational generation that sees the author of<br />multiple books and a successful career in the UN as a role model.</p>.<p>The choice of Mallikarjun Kharge has been critiqued by some commentators on the ground that he is 80 years old. Yet, it's interesting that the Gandhi family settled on two names, both of which come from subaltern communities. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, whose candidature was not to be, belongs to a Backward caste, and Kharge is a Dalit who has long experience in Parliament and state politics and was in the reckoning for Karnataka chief minister on three occasions. He never made it as CM, but his loyalty to the party has never waned, and he is from a state where the Congress still has bases and prospects. He's a nine-time MLA from Karnataka, the state where the Bharat Jodo Yatra has now entered and where elections take place in the first half of 2023.</p>.<p>For the Dalit community, symbolic and real representation always counts, and this is the strongest element in the Kharge candidature. The next president of the Congress party would, in all likelihood, therefore, be a Dalit. This counts as the most significant Dalit figure in contemporary politics. Mayawati, the BSP chief, appears to be as comatose as the Congress was until the other day.</p>.<p>Indeed, one could say that both the Congress candidates have more heft and personality than the current president of India's pre-eminent political party, who is selected jointly by the RSS and Narendra Modi-Amit Shah. Yet we must accept that the Congress has been sucker punched by the BJP for close to a decade and appeared helpless as entire factions and individuals broke away, and the party lost states in rapid succession.</p>.<p>With knees bruised, the party is at least getting up to start fighting. Rahul Gandhi is complaining about knee pain, but so far, he is still walking. Still, it's not as if electoral success is headed the Congress way. In the next round of polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, both ruled by the BJP with the Congress as the traditional opposition, the party is unlikely to pull any surprises. Indeed, in Gujarat, even its consistent hold on the opposition space is being challenged by new players.</p>.<p>We also don't know what will come out of the recently created mess in Rajasthan that has elections in a year. Will Ashok Gehlot stay on as CM, and what happens to Sachin Pilot, an ambitious and hard-working figure in the party with a profile in the media? There are other faction pressures at play in Chhattisgarh, too, the only other state where the party is still in power, and, likely, similar fissures will also erupt in Karnataka as we come closer to state polls. Kharge would certainly be tested on the grounds of his home state.</p>.<p>Still, what we can say is that a certain architecture is being put into place in the Congress, where the Gandhis have retreated to an extent. Rahul Gandhi would like to evolve into a sort of moral force in the party, and he is playing to his strengths of physical fitness and philosophical engagements. It's all tentative but an improvement on inaction. Walking is always good for the health as long as the knees do not buckle.</p>.<p>(<em>Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author</em>)</p>.<p><em>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</em></p>
<p>Finally, after many missteps in political calculus and thousands of footsteps of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, something is stirring in the Congress. It's making enough news for the BJP and the on-leash TV channels to do an obsessive nightly nit-picking of each step (and misstep) of the party they say has no future in India. When the anchors can't find a Muslim-inspired topic, they quickly shift to picking holes in the Congress. In a perverse way, that's good news for the party.</p>.<p>As we head towards the polls for president of the Congress, one could say that the process in itself is good for the health of Indian democracy, and we should be grateful for small mercies. First, in democratic India, we will actually see a contest of sorts for the post of a party president, and in the Congress, for the first time after 20 years without a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the fray.</p>.<p>Yes, the first family is apparently believed to be on the side of one candidate, in this instance, the veteran Mallikarjun Kharge, so it's not likely to be quite like the recent "real" contest for leadership of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. But in India, where parties are run by families, charismatic individual leaders or the RSS, it's still better than not having a contest.</p>.<p>The former Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, would win according to most estimates, but three-term MP Shashi Tharoor too could emerge a winner even in defeat. He's begun a charming campaign with the hashtag #ThinkTomorrowThinkTharoor and has said that there's a need to see "something" happen in the Congress and that elections can galvanise interest in a party that's gone through rough years, losing 39 of the last 45 elections. Reportedly, the members of the Gandhi family also believe so and see the elections as an occasion to showcase the party and create a narrative as opposed to responding to one.</p>.<p>If that's a goal as it should be, Tharoor, as the challenger, does engage the younger generation of urban India, among whom he is wildly popular. Have a Tharoor event on any campus, and it would be a house full and overflowing. There's something about the former diplomat's articulation that fascinates young aspirational India. There is a critique that he's not a mass leader connected to the Hindi belt, but then who in the Congress remains so in an era when, in the last general election, Rahul Gandhi too lost from Uttar Pradesh?</p>.<p>Rahul Gandhi is an MP from Kerala from where Tharoor has won three Lok Sabha elections. It's the state that gave the Congress its largest chunk of MPs in 2019. Tharoor's debating skills are superb; he has 8.3 million followers on Twitter and is just a good face to put out there for a party seeking to connect with an aspirational generation that sees the author of<br />multiple books and a successful career in the UN as a role model.</p>.<p>The choice of Mallikarjun Kharge has been critiqued by some commentators on the ground that he is 80 years old. Yet, it's interesting that the Gandhi family settled on two names, both of which come from subaltern communities. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, whose candidature was not to be, belongs to a Backward caste, and Kharge is a Dalit who has long experience in Parliament and state politics and was in the reckoning for Karnataka chief minister on three occasions. He never made it as CM, but his loyalty to the party has never waned, and he is from a state where the Congress still has bases and prospects. He's a nine-time MLA from Karnataka, the state where the Bharat Jodo Yatra has now entered and where elections take place in the first half of 2023.</p>.<p>For the Dalit community, symbolic and real representation always counts, and this is the strongest element in the Kharge candidature. The next president of the Congress party would, in all likelihood, therefore, be a Dalit. This counts as the most significant Dalit figure in contemporary politics. Mayawati, the BSP chief, appears to be as comatose as the Congress was until the other day.</p>.<p>Indeed, one could say that both the Congress candidates have more heft and personality than the current president of India's pre-eminent political party, who is selected jointly by the RSS and Narendra Modi-Amit Shah. Yet we must accept that the Congress has been sucker punched by the BJP for close to a decade and appeared helpless as entire factions and individuals broke away, and the party lost states in rapid succession.</p>.<p>With knees bruised, the party is at least getting up to start fighting. Rahul Gandhi is complaining about knee pain, but so far, he is still walking. Still, it's not as if electoral success is headed the Congress way. In the next round of polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, both ruled by the BJP with the Congress as the traditional opposition, the party is unlikely to pull any surprises. Indeed, in Gujarat, even its consistent hold on the opposition space is being challenged by new players.</p>.<p>We also don't know what will come out of the recently created mess in Rajasthan that has elections in a year. Will Ashok Gehlot stay on as CM, and what happens to Sachin Pilot, an ambitious and hard-working figure in the party with a profile in the media? There are other faction pressures at play in Chhattisgarh, too, the only other state where the party is still in power, and, likely, similar fissures will also erupt in Karnataka as we come closer to state polls. Kharge would certainly be tested on the grounds of his home state.</p>.<p>Still, what we can say is that a certain architecture is being put into place in the Congress, where the Gandhis have retreated to an extent. Rahul Gandhi would like to evolve into a sort of moral force in the party, and he is playing to his strengths of physical fitness and philosophical engagements. It's all tentative but an improvement on inaction. Walking is always good for the health as long as the knees do not buckle.</p>.<p>(<em>Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author</em>)</p>.<p><em>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</em></p>