Congress must answer Ghulam Nabi Azad in party poll

Azad’s criticism is motivated but still valid

What Ghulam Nabi Azad said about the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi is correct, and what the party said about him in response is equally correct, but the balance of blame favours Azad. That is because his criticism of the party and its leader is more important than the faults that the party has now found in him. The first is an analysis of the decay of an institution by a person who has known it well and for long, and has himself been party to that decline, and the second is about what prompted him to do it. Azad may have had less than honourable reasons and personal motives to leave the party, but his reasons and motives do not detract from the value of his criticism. He is not the first person to say that the Congress is held captive to the Gandhi family, that there is no democracy in the party, nor to blame Rahul Gandhi for the party’s decline over the last decade. None of the words like ‘coterie’, ‘sycophants’, ‘remote control’ and ‘proxies’ that Azad used may be out of place about the party’s enclosed world at the top, although Azad, unsurprisingly, did not see or acknowledge that reality when he himself was part of that charmed circle, which he was for very long, and was enjoying its benefits.

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Azad may have concentrated his fire on an individual for personal reasons, not least to please his newfound friend across the political divide. But many others who have left the party or may leave it have the same personal reasons, too, and that makes it a common ground. Most of them have held key positions in the party. When they vote with their feet, the party does not get stronger. A good section of the ‘G-23’ group that asked some questions has left and some more may go. That only shows the party’s inability to absorb dissent.

The crisis in the Congress, however, is bigger than the crisis of leadership that was known without Azad’s saying. The party is not clear about its ideology, it is confused about its strategies, and there is no consultative process on important issues. All this has to be seen in the bitterly competitive and hostile space it finds itself in when the room for its functioning is increasingly shrinking. These have to be addressed, but it has to first settle the leadership issue to be able to tackle the larger political challenge. It has set the election process rolling and a new president is expected to be in place in October. It has, in that process, a chance to reply to Azad and others and to make a statement about itself.