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India needs a fighting-fit Opposition. Can Congress (at least now) step up to the job?
At a time when the Congress is preparing for crucial assembly elections, party seniors should have anticipated the downsides of public scenes of inner-party fissures. Clearly, some people are sleeping at the wheel
SANJAY JHA
AUGUST 31, 2022 / 09:19 AM IST

The Congress needs to exude hunger, and its leadership must be like a cat on a hot tin roof till they reach the finish line. (Image source: PTI/File)
The Congress has developed a peculiar fetish of late; every time it takes a step forward, it must necessarily take two steps backwards. It is as if this deleterious tactic is part of its operating manual.
For the die-hard Congressi (and trust me, the grand old party still evokes a truckload of nostalgia for many), this has been a frustrating ordeal. For the eternal optimists like the undersigned, it is worse.
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It is as if the Congress is hell-bent on a kamikaze mission when all it needs to do is to fasten its seatbelt. Veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation adds another embarrassing chapter to the party’s dissipating, once lodestar status, in India’s political journey. It could have been avoided. It should have been stopped.
Azad has shot off a tempestuous letter to the interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi, in the most savage appraisal ever. It will have repercussions. While Azad has since moved on, the Congress must stop making vicious counterattacks by denigrating the old warhorse of 50 years.
For a moment, just think why GNA (as he is affectionately nicknamed by most) would have to take such a drastic measure at time when he is probably just a few years older than Prime Minister Narendra Modi? It is not the Rajya Sabha seat as many have hurriedly conjectured. Or the unwarranted nomination to an inconsequential state political committee. It is basically about not being heard. It is about not being respected.
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Azad is seeing the party that once governed India and scripted its great destiny, distressingly wither away in front of one’s eyes, being reduced to a helpless spectator. To use the well-known cliché, it is impotent rage. A form of political castration.
Azad and fellow colleague Anand Sharma are not the only ones going through this excruciating experience of seeing Congress’ death-in-slow motion. There are many. Those whose breaking point threshold are lower (Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, RPN Singh, Sushmita Deb, Sunil Kumar Jakhar, Kuldeep Bishnoi, etc.) have already left. There could still be many others.
Not everyone is an ideologically-wedded person in India’s scurvy marketplace of horse-trading. In the Age of Operation Lotus, everything is transactional. Many political leaders have become like a C-grade mid-cap stock floated by promoters who are confidence tricksters.
The standard perfunctory response that Azad is a fair-weather friend who has eventually turned out to be a Judas is incorrect. Neither is the rather stoical, nonchalant dismissal that the party can do without those who lack perseverance. That is akin to living in a fool’s paradise.
Amidst the chaos, a big step forward, admittedly and quite literally, is the Bharat Jodo Yatra. After eons, the Congress is demonstrating some oomph by taking on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government that has remained largely unchallenged by the Congress, despite monumental economic blunders, institutional annihilation, and dismal, disintegrating social cohesion. Its perceptibly kinetic remonstrance against the Enforcement Directorate harassment of the Gandhi’s on the rather facile National Herald case, showed that when the Congress wants to get into the act, it can.
Therefore, sadly Azad’s resignation, and Sharma’s angst only puncture this emerging renewal. It diverts public attention. It demoralises the average Congress worker. At a time when the Congress is preparing for crucial assembly elections starting with the ultimate prize, Gujarat, party seniors should have anticipated the downsides of such public scenes of inner-party fissures. Clearly, some people are sleeping at the wheel.
At the time of writing (the situation will remain fluid till the formal closure of the election or selection of the Congress President in October), Shashi Tharoor seems to have at least insinuated that he might be a potential contender. That might be a good thing, prompting others from G-23 to throw their hat in the ring.
For sure, there will be an official ‘High Command’-supported candidate, in the event that Rahul Gandhi refuses to be browbeaten to the august position despite Mallikarjun Kharge’s belligerent proclamation that “we will force him” to take up the job. That was a tectonic faux pas as it will further reinforce the perception that Rahul Gandhi is the proverbial reluctant politician.
The Congress needs to exude hunger, and its leadership must be like a cat on a hot tin roof till they reach the finish line. The countdown to 2024 is already begun, and the party is still tying the shoelaces yet.
It is never too late to change though. The fact that the tone and tenor of both Azad and a much younger Jaiveer Shergill (who quit in a huff too) was similar, tells you of the inter-generational crisis, the intrinsic fault-lines in the Congress. The party must fix it. Now.
India needs a fighting-fit Opposition led by a reinvigorated Congress that reclaims its original place in the Sun. The shadow of one-party dominance puts the future of India’s democracy on a precipitous edge. It is a cliff-hanger that it can ill-afford. But the Congress will have to be imaginative. Bold. After all, you have to break eggs to make an omelette.
SANJAY JHA is former National Spokesperson of the Congress, and author of The Great Unravelling: India After 2014. Twitter: @JhaSanjay. Views are personal.
TAGS: #Congress #opinion #Rahul Gandhi
FIRST PUBLISHED: AUG 31, 2022 09:15 AM
