Congress party faces a grim battle!
Time to reform the Congress party drastically has come!
Congress party can never remain a family property!
Dynastic politics days are over!
Congress party must regain or restore the old traditions.
There must be strict autonomy for state units, the CWC and the AICC and Parliamentary party must be elected!
Today, 5th April, 2014 to be a crucial day for India. That is for the outcome of the 2014 general Elections. The latest poll by two separate agencies, one for NDTV and the other for the CNNIBN give almost identical predictions. The Congress is set to gain not more than 100 and odd MPs. The BJP is also set for 200 and odd MPs. This means that for sure the Congress has to vacate office and give way to the BJP. What does that mean? It can mean many things. Today also is flashed across India and globally The Economist magazine writing.”India deserves better!”
That is also troubling, troubling for the Congress insiders like myself.
Yes, there are a vast majority of Congressmen and women who would feel disappointed the way the Congress party is gaping about its ways.
Sonia Gandhi must have learnt some lessons by now, let us hope.
But from all indications, she hasn’t.
There is still astonishingly room for sycophancy within the major national party that had a glorious past; it fought a long battle to win freedom for India through peaceful manner.
Now, after 67 long years, we the old timers in the party, those of us who all looked for the inspiration of Gandhi and Nehru to sustain us in our public and political life today seem to have become helpless.
Helpless that is writ large on the faces of many a senior Congress leader today.
As the news reports today flash out, there is a long list of leaders who chose to opt out of contest in the elections that looks like a make or break election.
The senior leaders include P.Chidambaram, the finance minister and one who fancied himself not long ago as the alternative for Prime Minister’s job.
He is the economic development face of the Congress party.
When Mr.Narendra Modi harps on his development agenda it was P.Chidambaram who almost ridiculed Mr.Modi about his knowledge and grasp of economics.
But now, the finance minister is nowhere! He is almost hiding from the contest; the Opposition rightly accuses him as running away from contesting.
It is the greatest tragedy of the Congress party that both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister are not showing up their faces in the electoral battle that is so crucial to enlighten the voters and stem the tide in favour of the party.
In fact, the finance minister must have taken on Mr.Modi in his own prestigious constituency, either from Gujarat or from UP. After all, the Congress track record in economic development must be pitted against Mr.Modi’s record.
In fact, the Congress is doing such a bad job, it is thoroughly abdicating its duty to stand up and show to the public at large what its economic achievements are.
In fact, it is a great pity that in this difficult and challenging situation the Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh had led down the party in this time o crisis.
The PM is in Delhi and yet he seems to be unconcerned about what is going on in the party’s affairs when his presence, his participation, his intervention would have made a great deal of difference.
To retain him in this prestigious high office, both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are paying a heavy price in terms of their own credibility.
In fact, today is also the day when the BJP heavyweights led by Ravi Shankar Prasad have released their charge sheet against the Congress parties’ major failures.
One such failure is the way Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi; the charge sheet enumerates, went about devaluing and also reducing the dignity and power of the Prime Minister’s Office.
One of the causalities of the style of party leadership practised by Sonia Gandhi is to completely undermine, if not totally destroy the time-honoured democratic principle of Prime Minister’s Prerogative!
Ironically, now Mr.Narendra Modi is already practising this anti-democratic principle, if principle is this authoritarian mindset is to be called. See how Modi is undermining senior leaders, from L.K.Advani to Jaswant Singh from an open electoral contest.
This was a job done over a long period. We can charge Sonia Gandhi and also Rahul Gandhi and in fact a long essay can be written on the subject of how the PMO had been downgraded by a series of subtle and not so subtle actions on the part of the mother-son duo.
As for Sonia Gandhi she want out of the way to nominate and appoint very high profile jobs, like Governors and even ambassadors and even highly undeserving favourites in very highly sensitive and prestigious positions. With the result, to take one instance, the Governors, there are now almost 50 per cent of the Governors who were former are policemen, security guards or military men or family retainers.
Can she do this? But she did it with such a vengeance that all the right thinking Congressmen, very senior Congress leaders who had given their lifetimes to the party were thrown out and the heavy price Sonia Gandhi is now paying and when the party is so deserted by selfish persons who used Sonia as a source of jobs and funds and now she stands bereft of all committed party workers.
The way in which she constituted the National Advisory Council is also now a subject of criticism by the BJP charge sheet.
Yes, there is some truth in the BJP criticsm.The NAC is a sort of cover for vested interests, this time for the leftists and shadowy Maoists, as the BJP charge sheet terms.
In fact, the NAC didn’t bring any more strength in terms of cadre or mass appeal. This superficial populism has also helped to destroy many established institutions and conventions, from Parliamentary debate and scrutiny and the PMO oversight. The very PMO had been poorly manned with very unsuited political and official faces.
Another of the charge sheet mentions of course the list of large scale corruption in 2 G and coal and Commonwealth Games.
You can ignore certain things in politics. But when it comes to certain blatant corrupt allies Sonia must have acted in some shrewdness and wisdom.
To take the DMK as an ally, Sonia was acting in a very foolish way as she must have known that Tamil Nadu was a Congress bastion and it has had a long history of Congress movement.
Sonia never bothered about the very important state in the South and today she had almost abandoned the state when she realised the DMK is proving nasty ally.
Why, even Rahul Gandhi after making so much effort to conduct an election within the Youth Congress, it earned him much goodwill and yet he chose to abandon the state for some inexplicable reasons.
So, now the party is paying heavily when it is predicted that it would be wiped out!
Is this the way the Congress President functions? Nor Rahul Gandhi does his follow-up work?
What we say about Tamil Nadu applies with equal emphasis to other major states like Gujarat, UP and Bihar, not to mention West Bengal.
Why Sonia Gandhi is behaving like this?
Why, at this late hour bring in the name of her daughter Priyanka Gandhi as a possible alternative.
There are even now sycophants, many Janardhan Diwedi, Ahmed Patel, poor men, they are left out in many decision making processes, Ahmed Patel had no role in Gujarat candidate selections and he is paying for his sycophancy.
Why, there are not enough candidates to context in this election. What an irony!
On the contrary, what we see is the ironical deserting of the Congress party and Manish Tiwari, another high profile and seemingly a loyal colleague refused to context. Garhwali MP Satpal Maharaj skipping over to the BJP! Congress candidates running away after filing the nominations! C.P.Joshi asking for a change of constituency, so too Sachin Pilot, though he was refused a request!
The most men Sonia Gandhi depended upon, men like Manmohan and Chidambaram and Tiwari, they proved the most undeserving at the time of wanting. They are at best time-servers and at worst plain sycophants! Sonia Gandhi couldn’t simply distinguish.
And see the mental makeup of those close to the Congress President.
How many are working out of the AICC office?
Is this the talent Sonia Gandhi is able to assemble?
It is too late to lament.
It is time that once the elections come to an end and the next government takes over the Congress party, surely, must have a great deal o introspection to dao.
Certain drastic changes would come through whether one wishes or not.
Sonia Gandhi can’t continue.
There is this rather bogus talk that the Congress is a family-owned party, owned by the Gandhi family. This is pure rubbish.
How can a political party of the size, a continental size and also a party with such a long history and representing a diverse country of diverse cultures can be run as a family property.
So, let us all, both the general public, patriotic forces and party loyalists, long-time workers and even intellectuals and ideological thinkers have to come together and forge a new purpose and restore well-established traditions and conventions and institutions.
As we write there are five other countries, from Afghanistan to Indonesia where elections are being held. India is the world’s largest democracy, Indonesia, the third largest democracy. So, these other countries, Hungary, Algeria and Iraq, why, even such countries like Turkey, Egypt and Thailand are undergoing democratic turmoil, very much like what we see here in India. So, Indin people have to play a great role model too.
To see India emerge as a disciplined democracy and a liberal society.
Indian citizens would be ever energised by their past history, their present commitments, as peoples and as citizens and also Indians would surely, the vast majority of the below-25 years youth would see their destiny only in a great country and society.
So, the leaders, big and small, must resist the temptations of the moment to play the communal card and polarise the polls. Yes, there are serious challenges, the power of big money and also the visible media manipulation. Let us hope that with a much more vigilant Election Commission and a wide number of NGOs like Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms, voters have enough knowledge about the candidates. Surely the most corrupt and criminals would be voted out and the most able would be voted in.
This is the time we have to stand up and fight for a genuine democratic order in India. Jai Hind!