INDIA AFTER CONGRESS: IS IT TIME?
The political meltdown of the Congress party may have reached a tipping point bringing its future role in Indian polity under scrutiny. Episode #12
Hi Everyone,
A very happy Monday to you.
Last week the government announced new rules for digital news, OTT platforms and social media. A fight between big tech and governments, already playing out in the rest of the world, just formally spilled over into India. The new rules threaten a radical makeover of the online space. One big concern is that big brother will squeeze out the freedom that most of us have come to expect from the Internet.
My two paisa on this is that freedom is never absolute. Our obsession with the attention economy—defined by clicks/followers we amass—may have caused us to overlook the basic tenets of information dissemination. As they used to say in journalism: If it bleeds, it leads. Now my fear is that we are lurching to the other extreme—too much control. This is something that could threaten the very basis of the Internet. That would be a terrible tragedy. To be sure this is an extremely complex issue and hence something that merits a longer and more nuanced conversation.
Last week also witnessed some major political developments. The Election Commission announced elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Puducherry, the results of which will be declared on 2 May. It is a key election cycle with high stakes and will be keenly watched.
Sticking with this political favour—especially after the fall of the government in Puducherry and fresh activity among dissidents in the grand old party—I put the spotlight on the Congress party and ask whether its political meltdown has reached a tipping point. If so it has serious implications for the country’s polity.
Once you read this post, please do share a comment or drop me an email with your thoughts or ping me on twitter at @capitalcalculus. It is key to growing this newsletter and a conversation among all of us. A big shout out to Vandana B, Kapil, Yugainder, Rajit, Gautam and Premasundaran for going the extra mile to share their thoughts on my previous post. And, many thanks to readers hitting the like button; more the merrier 😊.
Read on.
THE TIPPING POINT?
Last Tuesday, the Congress-led government in Puducherry collapsed. The state’s chief minister V Narayanasamy chose to resign ahead of the floor test; logical, given that the government had been reduced to a minority after several members of the legislative assembly (MLA) resigned.
Several trends stand out:
For one, this is the third time in two years—first it was Karnataka and last year it was in Madhya Pradesh—that a ruling Congress government has been reduced to a minority after sitting MLAs resigned. Rajasthan escaped a similar fate after some rear guard action by the party. The political glue that binds the party is clearly diluted.
Second, probably for the first time, the Congress will have no presence in South India. Inexplicable given that this part of India has in the past lined up behind the party even as the rest of India opted for a political rethink. The loss of Southern comfort will hurt.
At present the political footprint of the Congress is restricted to the states of Punjab, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where it heads the government; this apart it is a junior partner in an alliance ruling Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
Third, the meltdown of the Congress party, apparent since their devastating loss in the 2014 general election, has acquired fresh momentum. The bold manner in which dissidents are throwing a challenge to the Gandhi family suggests that the point of reckoning may be here.
Take the three observations together and the obvious surmise—albeit harsh—is whether India’s polity should consider the unthinkable: Life after the Congress.
The Past, Present
The sorry state of the Congress party is a little difficult to comprehend, especially for baby boomers like me. Growing up all we knew about was the prowess of the grand old party and it ubiquitous footprint across the length and breadth of India.
Guess nothing is permanent. Especially in India—something that is several countries rolled into one and hence a democracy that is subject to a myriad sets of electoral pulls and pressures.
But the warning signs have been around for some time. We may either have chosen to ignore it or plain and simple: missed it completely. The party’s two successive stints in office ending as recently as 2014 probably lulled most of us.
But the audacious win of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi and the unprecedented humbling of the Congress party—reducing their number in the Lok Sabha to less than 50 MPs—revealed the structural fault lines. It set analysts thinking. In a piece published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Praveen Rai and Sanjay Kumar argued that the decline of the party had been coming for decades and worse was to follow.
“The seeds of the deterioration of the Congress party which were sown during the period of Nehru germinated and grew during the Indira regime before becoming a full blown tree in the Sonia-Rahul era which is most likely to fall due to its overbearing weight.”
Recent events and incidents of dissent suggest we should brace for the worst.
The Future
An obvious fallout of the continued political erosion of the Congress is the political vacuum—this time in the opposition. And filling this void will not be easy, given that the architecture of the Congress is over 100 years old. Successful political start-ups like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may see an opportunity for themselves. Yet it is another thing to claim the mantle.
What everyone has to contend with is that new pole of Indian politics, the BJP, has been preparing for this situation. Six years ago analysts dismissed their slogan, “Congress Mukht Bharat (an India sans the Congress)”, as wishful thinking. But given how the BJP electoral juggernaut has continued to gain momentum, even the biggest critics have been given cause for thought.
Under Modi the party has also implemented the idea of inorganic growth—exactly why several Congress veterans have bailed, sometimes jumping ship (as it happened last week in Puducherry) even when the party is still in power. For instance, a key architect of the BJP’s rise in the North-east of India is Himanta Biswa Sarma—someone who joined from the Congress party. And so far the party has managed this delicate balance between insiders and outsiders.
What this is doing is rapidly expanding the BJP’s national footprint—powered on by their ability to deliver on their promise of economic empowerment: bijli, sadak. bank, ghar, paani. They have emerged as a serious challenger to the feisty Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress party in West Bengal; joined the electoral conversation in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Further the missing opposition (at the national level) has only emboldened the Modi regime. Yes the protests against the farm laws does suggest that the business of protests are now being outsourced to civil society (an implicit indictment of the opposition’s inability to stitch together an alternative narrative) and hence will play out differently. But this has not deterred the government from pushing serious policy change—the just presented union budget being a good example.
At the moment it does look like advantage BJP. Like the Congress party did in the first two decades, the BJP is likely to dominate the national stage. At the state level though its hegemony is likely to be questioned as regional powers may find greater connect with the electorate.
But then in politics (like in cricket) there is never any certitude. The one thing the BJP has to watch for is anti-incumbency and being outsmarted by rivals driven by the maxim enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend (as it happened in Maharashtra). But then this is a story to be told another time.
Right now the spotlight is on the Congress. And for all the wrong reasons.
In Remembrance
In life people touch you in ways one can rarely imagine or define. It just happens.
Exactly my experience with Ambassador Ranjit Sethi who passed away in very unfortunate circumstances last week. I made his acquaintance as a fellow swimmer at a sports facility. Fluent in French I used to also see him chatter away with some diplomats from the European Union. And then at times you could sight him on the piano—also my last memory of him—playing a melody or a western classical piece. (And I just learnt that the piano was actually his on loan to the hotel.)
Harsh Shringla, India’s serving foreign secretary, wrote a nice tribute to the Ambassador. Unlike me, Shringla actually worked alongside the gentleman when he served as India’s Ambassador to France. Do read.
I hardly knew him, yet somehow I still had this connect with the Ambassador. It will always remain a mystery.
R.I.P.
Till we meet again next week. Stay safe.
Yes I fully agree. Looks like the final moments before a split down the middle of the Congress party.
Telling commentary on the current political scene