Congress family reunion case probe

Among the political recipes offered for the revival of the Congress party is an imaginative proposal involving the reunification of the erstwhile Congress family. Shortly after the Congress lost power in 2014, Congress leaders Digvijay Singh and Ajit Jogi called for separate parties such as the Yuvajan Shramik Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to “come” . In defense of “Nehruwadi and Gandhian thought” to fight communal forces.

In the absence of a formidable national opposition, the desire to establish a federal congressional front has only gained ground, at least among commentators.

There are, of course, historical precedents of opposition parties locked in unilateral competition with a dominant party, trading a portion of their autonomy to facilitate a joint bid for national power, for example the Janata Party of 1975. and the Janata Dal of 1988.

In fact, a larger Congress union would stand on a comparatively stronger ideological base than the preceding ragtag public collection. Relying largely on a centrist, secular platform and an umbrella coalition of voters, there is very little ideological separation between the Congress and its scattered parties.

Restoration of role of CWC

However, the Congress family’s dream of reunification begins to fade on the discovery of its possible terms. A difficult problem is the size difference of the components; The Indian National Congress is many times bigger than the broken parties. Janata parties could coexist because they were almost equal in size and spread, thus ruling out the possibility of a single faction domination.

Theoretically, there is a way, going back to the pre-Indira Congress. The Congress was once a party where the high command was not synonymous with the Nehru-Gandhi family (and the troupe around it), but with the Congress Working Committee (CWC), which functions according to its stated role of being the supreme decision-making body. Was. Of the party The CWC, in turn, was dominated by territorial bosses, who derived their power from their hold on their respective state units. Of course, while Jawaharlal Nehru was a great figure within the party, decision-making in the CWC was generally sought by consensus.

This is the kind of federal, internally democratic Congress that could hypothetically tempt Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar or Jaganmohan Reddy to return to the party and try to stake claim on the national leadership. However, the nature of our political competition has changed radically in the half century since the rise of the “Congress system”. Would such a federal Congress still be viable as a party today?

autonomy of state units

There is no easy answer to this question. This is because a centrist political party in a country as diverse as India will always face a difficult-to-solve paradox: how to allow state units autonomy, while ensuring that state units are separate from the parent party. Don’t be

A centrist party has an inherent tendency to split due to the absence of a core, ideological base that is irrevocably tied to the party brand. For example, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not seen any permanent divisions as any separate entity on the ideology of Hindutva cannot hope to compete with the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh alliance. In contrast, the Congress has historically worked on the principle of bridging the ideological distance with its primary rivals, co-opting both right-wing and left-wing leaders from opposing parties at different times. The Congress has rarely established much on the basis of ideological specificity, as its social base has always been more dependent on leadership and organisation. Different caste compositions and interest groups dominated the Congress in different states; Thus political scientists Chhibber and Petrosic (1989) described the Congress as a “coalition of state units” joined together in the pursuit of power.

Despite their largely autonomous existence, state units remained with the National Party throughout the phase of the “Congress system” as the Congress government at the center controlled large taps of protection funneled through party structures; There was built-in factionalism to ensure that a few leaders were able to control the loyalty of the majority of the state unit.

Indira Gandhi dissolved both of these glimmers of party unity through her policy of “de-institutionalisation”: the separation of local and even state-level party structures. Unsurprisingly, the Congress faced several divisions, but these were often neutralized or forced into a swift homecoming. It was because of her populist, charismatic appeal that Mrs Gandhi managed to dominate the lower strata of society, who had hitherto been excluded from the largely dominant caste-based architecture of the “Congress system”. Thus, Mrs Gandhi’s answer to the problem of keeping the Umbrella Party together was complete centralized control of state units.

division, cause

So, what holds the party together now? This is not the protection provided by the central government, as the party has been out of power for almost a decade. It is not even the fierce factional competition that marked the state units in the 1950-60s. Over the past three decades, factions in the state have attempted to consolidate into larger units under various pressures: the de-institutionalization of party structures, the increasing patronage powers of the chief minister, financial devolution, and the increasingly presidential nature of state elections. As far as the national glue provided by the leadership is concerned, both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have struggled to bring in additional votes to the party.

In the absence of these centripetal powers, the Congress has faced major and permanent split in the form of NCP, TMC and YSRCP. In the 1980s, Sharad Pawar merged his split Congress(S) because the Congress was still the dominant party at the Centre. The NCP has not faced any such impediment to its bargaining power. And the ease with which Mamata Banerjee was able to walk with most of the Congress base in Bengal exposed the decline in factional competition. Three other factions of the Congress (led by Pranab Mukherjee, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi and Somen Mitra) focused mainly on court conspiracies. The YSRCP split reflected the challenge of saving party loyalists from joining the political capital of dynastic warlords, who could now bypass traditional party structures and directly connect with the beneficiaries of lavishly funded welfare schemes with the help of a technological bureaucracy. Huh.

A federal Congress would probably help inspire much-needed inner-party competition, but it could also supercharge its internal tendency to divide. The Congress is holding onto the Gandhi family brand so tightly as it appears to be the last available glue. The interesting thing about the myth of the Gandhi family embodying the party’s eternal DNA is not the veracity or falsity of its proposition. Like all myths, that is beside the point. The myth serves to hold the party together because everyone claims to believe in it. In the absence of a high command, whose authority is respected and based on few values ​​more than partisan jockeying, there is a risk that Congress may become trapped in disgruntled state parties before it has the necessary organizational structure for a stable federal. get a chance to make it back. Celebration. It is this precarious centrist paradox in which Congress finds itself, offering no easy recipe for a revival.

Asim Ali is a political researcher and columnist