Important messages emerging from the two-day 84th plenary session of the Congress Party, which ended in New Delhi on Sunday, suggest that the party realises it has been pushed into a tight corner after its low score in the last Lok Sabha elections, and is prepared to make the effort to fix the problem. The niggardly result had badly lowered party morale. The mood has turned positive only after the Gujarat poll results late last year where the party did very creditably. This result owed to two main factors: the Congress sought to build social coalitions as well as a minor political one, and it gave tickets to grassroots workers.
These are the essentials that party chief Rahul Gandhi, who took charge in December, and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, sought to underscore. The message which gains salience in the immediate political context of the preparations for the next Lok Sabha election is that the party will adopt a “practical” approach to facilitate the coming together of “like-minded parties”, which means sharpening the ability to strike working arrangements with any party ranged against the ruling BJP.
This won’t be easy, given that many regional “secular” parties remain wary of the Congress, but the party is conscious that its future advance will be thwarted if the BJP is not defeated.
Speaking at the conclave, Mrs Gandhi recalled how at the Shimla conference of the leadership in 2003 the Congress had decided on the wisdom of seeking election allies, in the process jettisoning the understanding of the 1997 Panchmarhi conference which had underlined the idea of the Congress going it alone.
In the party president’s nearly hour-long speech at the close of the Delhi plenary,
Mr Gandhi clearly noted that the country will “punish” the Congress if the party was seen only to be making a “grab for power”. This could be interpreted as being accommodative toward allies on the question of leadership of the UPA if such a coalition can upstage the BJP and its allies, unless the Congress has a decisive numerical edge in the next Lok Sabha.
In order to do long-term repair of the party’s image — characterised by nepotism and clinging to party posts — the Congress president said his “first task” would be to knock down barriers between leaders and workers, and to promote workers lower down the order. This again may not be easy to do in a party with certain ingrained cultural traits.
But as Mr Gandhi noted, paraphrasing his famous remarks in the United States last year that the party had shown “arrogance” towards the end of the UPA-2 period, the Congress had ceased to find the acceptance of the nation in the UPA’s latter phase. The diagnosis is sound. The cure too must keep up.
