Can Congress resurrect itself?

Prashant Kishor wanted to be more than an election strategist for the Congress, but the party would not give him anything more. Kishor has been trying for the past few years to capitalise on his election management expertise to grow into a political player. He does not want history to remember him only as an excellent election strategist.

We cannot fault him. We all have our ambitions, so why should we expect him not have his own? Especially when he has proven himself to be a miracle worker! He has changed the way elections are fought, candidates are selected, the way parties communicate with voters; he holds a mirror to parties he works with so that they can see their own ugly features and get rid of them. With his astounding amount of data, he tells parties what different sections of voters want so they can accordingly frame their manifesto and slogans. He is an incomparable salesman in marketing party leaders as brands.

These are ways totally different from how parties in India have traditionally approached elections. Kishor has proven more than once that the revolution he introduced works. That is why every party is eager to get him on board.

He knows his value in the eyes of the political parties. He knows he is extraordinarily positioned to demand an extraordinary position. He wants a position of authority next to the supreme leader. The closest he got to achieving his ambition was when he was working with Nitish Kumar. He was appointed a vice president of the JD(U). But Kishor was not satisfied. According to highly placed sources in the JD(U), he wanted to be Deputy CM, but Nitish Kumar turned down his demand. He was appointed as principal adviser, with the status of a cabinet minister, by Amarinder Singh when he was the Chief Minister of Punjab.

Kishor was negotiating with the Congress for a similar position in the party. It is not yet known what office he sought, but we can be sure he must be asking to be next in authority to the leader. The Congress was unwilling to give him that kind of office and authority. From what has emerged so far, the Congress would have been happiest to have Kishor working for its election management. However, the party was willing to accommodate his ambition of graduating into a political leader by including him in the ‘Empowered Action Group 2024’. It was an offer he considered much lesser than what he desired. He wanted to be known as the man who resurrected the Congress. But the Congress seems to have decided it could resurrect itself without his help.

Can the Congress resurrect itself? The answer is: It has to. Whether Kishor works for the party or not, much of the work of reinvention has to be done by the party itself. The first thing it has to do is elect a leader. It has had no president since Rahul Gandhi resigned three years ago. Sonia Gandhi, who was perceived to be retiring, had to take charge again. The sense the average voter gets out of it is that the party is going backward, not forward. The voter votes for a leader whose persona is associated with the future, not with the past. No wonder, more and more voters are beginning to see the Congress as an old man who is not relevant to their lives.

Yet, the irony is that under the situation the Gandhis have driven the party into, Rahul Gandhi, despite his drawbacks, remains the party’s best bet for leadership.

Many argue that the Congress cannot be saved unless the Gandhis get out of its leadership positions because the voters no longer accept dynastic politicians but only self-made politicians such as Modi. That is an erroneous view. Out of the 543 members of the Lok Sabha in 2014, as many as 114 belonged to political dynasties. Their number rose to 162 in 2019. The Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand are from political dynasties. There are several parties led by political dynasties in India — DMK, Shiv Sena, TDP, NCP, Shiromani Akali Dal, Samajwadi Party, to name just a few. These parties have substantial vote shares. How can we presume that the Congress is destined to die merely due to its dynastic leadership when many parties with dynastic leadership are thriving?

The Congress has been on a downslide not because its leadership is dynastic but because it is not dynamic. Rahul Gandhi has failed to inspire the imagination and trust of a rising number of voters because he has not shown the consistency, zeal, passion and spiritedness they expect from a political leader. He has been more absent than present in his engagement with the electorate and the party organisation. The reincarnation of the Congress has to begin with the reincarnation of Rahul Gandhi. Whether the party does it with Kishor, or without, it can only sell a reincarnated Rahul Gandhi, not current one.

Apart from leadership, the party has to reinvent its ideological position. Hindu supremacism today is no longer limited to the RSS workers but has spread into the citizenry. The Congress has to decide on a robust, unwavering political position from which to fight the madness.

Once the leadership and ideological reinventions are done, the party would need to reinvent its organisation and election management (with or without Prashant Kishor). It would be easier for the party to recruit members once the leadership and ideology begin to inspire people. And once people start getting attracted to the party, it would become easier for it to get foot soldiers, influencers and communicators at the grassroots.

(The writer is an independent journalist and the author of ‘Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar’)