By Amulya Ganguli
The one important final result of the Congress’s latest Chintan Shivir in Rajasthan was Rahul Gandhi’s acknowledgement that the occasion has misplaced contact with the folks. Nothing demonstrated this disconnect greater than the steep fall within the occasion’s Lok Sabha tally to 44 in 2014 and 53 5 years later.
Nevertheless, what the Congress’s uncrowned king didn’t care to clarify was the explanation why the occasion was so summarily rejected by the folks. Given its stellar pre- and post-independence historical past until the early Nineteen Seventies, the occasion’s ignominious decline requires critical introspection.
There’s nothing to point, although, that the Congress has undertaken any such train in recent times. As a substitute, it has seemingly attributed the occasion’s dismal efficiency to the folks’s incapability to understand its intrinsic worth and has apparently been ready for them to understand their mistake and return the occasion to energy.
It is because of this that the Congress has tended to treat the BJP as a usurper which will probably be relegated within the not too distant future to its rightful place on the margins of Indian politics the place it had languished for many years from its Jan Sangh days. The Congress will then casually take the reins of energy as soon as once more in its palms.
The road within the celebrated track in a Raj Kapoor movie – mera joota hai Japani – which says, hum singhasan par ja baithey jab jab Karen eradey, typifies this feudal angle of the natural-born proprietor to ascend to the throne at any time when he likes. It’s this boastful mindset which has are available in the best way of the Congress analyzing the causes of its setback.
It is just now after the drubbing within the latest meeting elections that the Congress seems to have sensed the favored disenchantment with it. Even then, however Rahul Gandhi’s belated admission, what’s lacking is an understanding of why the occasion is in such dire straits. This incapability to evaluate the explanations for the occasion’s weak spot is behind Rahul Gandhi’s fatuous [DG1] perception that solely the Congress can tackle the BJP and never the regional events.
The folks desert a celebration due to the issues of the management. Until the Congress focusses on these defects, there’s little hope of it recovering misplaced floor. Maybe the occasion ought to understand that one of many causes for its present predicament is that it lacks the three substances of the BJP’s success – vitality, articulation and a clear-cut ideology.
On all these counts, the BJP is approach forward. Its vitality is outwardly boundless as its leaders at numerous ranges are continually on the transfer, visiting just about all corners of the nation. They’re additionally extremely efficient audio system even when the principle purpose for his or her success in forcefully presenting their viewpoint is their never-ending emphasis on Hindu nationalism liberally sprinkled with anti-Muslim rhetoric. Certainly, it’s the latter which stays the cornerstone of the BJP’s worldview.
The Congress is patently at a drawback on this respect for it’s unable to make up its thoughts on the right way to counter the BJP on this difficulty. If the Congress toes the saffron occasion with a “comfortable” Hindutva stance, it is going to alienate the minorities and the liberals whereas if it adopts a tough, secular place, it could disenchant a sizeable part of the Hindus.
The confusion on the ideological entrance is the Congress’s bane and if the Chintan Shivir did nothing to dispel it, the reason being that the Congress at current merely doesn’t have the mental acumen to formulate an unambiguous coverage on the topic.
It isn’t solely with regard to secularism that the Congress has seemingly misplaced its approach, it’s in the identical quandary about “socialism” as effectively. In truth, its embracement of socialism even after the doctrine’s worldwide demise after the autumn of the Berlin wall made the occasion take the foot off the accelerator of financial reforms, as P. Chidambaram stated, and pave the best way for Narendra Modi’s rise. If Manmohan Singh had continued what he had began in 1991, the BJP would have remained within the doldrums.
Sarcastically, the Congress’s love affair with socialism has curbed the BJP’s enthusiasm for market-oriented insurance policies and made it emulate the Grand Previous Social gathering, thereby making Arun Shourie mock the BJP by saying that it’s ”Congress plus the cow”.
However whereas the BJP makes use of cow and communalism to push forward, the Congress is both marking time or retreating. The Congress’s earlier success was because of the presence of charismatic leaders – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi – and pro-industrial insurance policies exemplified by the development of metal crops (“dams are the temples of recent India”, as Nehru stated) and the organising of the IITs.
The termination of the licence-permit-control raj in 1991 marked the subsequent stage of the occasion’s ahead motion. However a fascination with socialism and dislike of capitalism ensured that the occasion couldn’t push ahead with financial reforms. Therefore, its current stagnation even because the BJP’s mixture of populism and communalism is popping India right into a Hindu rashtra. (IPA Service)
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