The earning curve: What Congress leader’s ‘3-4 generations’ statement reveals about Grand Old Party

Recently, in a social media post Pawan Khera, the leading spokesperson of the Congress, claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s understanding of his party was based on the basis of people who left Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As if to qualify what Khera said, though inadvertently, a senior leader from Karnataka added, “We have made enough for three to four generations in the name of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. And if we do not protest in this situation, there will be worms in our food.”

Former Karnataka Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar triggered a controversy with his remarks that the Congressmen should be indebted to Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi for making fortunes in their names in the course of their individual political careers. What he suggested, which cannot be said to be completely untrue, points towards a ‘spoils system’ in the functioning of the Congress.

According to various definition, in politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party — as opposed to a merit system, where people are awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity.

While this relates largely to the government bureaucracy, its extension to members of the political party is best reflected in what Ramesh said. This is not to suggest that other parties do not practise this; they do in large numbers, especially the regional outfits, but it has gripped the Congress like a cancer over the past few decades and remained the only political reason for its workers to continue association with the party.

No wonder in this hour of crisis, with the chances of the party being back in power looking remote, the workers are trudging elsewhere to seek the spoils. While the Congress would apportion the blame on the BJP for weaning away its leaders, it would also have to look inwards and realise that in the absence of political programmes, even those who have not ‘benefitted for two or three generations are now leaving the party.

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While Pawan Khera or Youth Congress leader BV Sriniwas may have risen through the ranks, one must not forget that their current position is also attributable to the vacancies created by the fortune seekers of the spoils system who have travelled elsewhere. The point can be more succinctly put by comparing the two parivars — the Congress parivar and the Sangh parivar.

While the former has proved to be a loose structure largely made up of the blocks of the families that have been with the party for two, three or four generations, the Sangh parivar consists of a number outfits working towards a common ideological goal.

Thus the Congress is faced with a situation, which ironically party president Sonia Gandhi herself spoke about a quarter of a century ago. In 1998, soon after she was anointed as party president, a Chintan Shivir (introspection conclave) was organised at Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh.

The flavour of the Pachmarhi session was captured in Sonia Gandhi’s inaugural address: “Electoral reverses are inevitable and are, in themselves, not cause for worry. But what is disturbing is the loss of our social base, of the social coalition that supports us and looks up to us.”

Why aren’t people looking up to the Congress party?

Pachmarhi was a clear reminder that the party cannot survive for long on the charisma of its leaders alone and that it needed to strengthen the organisation at every level. However, the resolve of Pachmarhi was not carried forward. The Congress decided to take refuge in the spoils system during the next decade and half when it was in power at the Centre and in several states.

It ran alliance governments at the Centre and also in the states with the sole purpose of being in power and not for any ideological advocacy. This enmeshed the governments in a plethora of corruption cases.

The vote against the Congress in 2014 Lok Sabha polls was against corruption. No wonder the BJP-led government has periodically opened these cases to have them on the back foot and the ruling party cannot be faulted for it either. On the other hand, despite being in power for eight years now, the Opposition is yet to corner the Narendra Modi government on the issue of corruption.

With the loss of power to distribute the spoils in the past eight years, the Congress leadership would have by now realised how weak the party has become. In the past two Lok Sabha elections, it could not move beyond double digits.

The learning curve for the Congress leadership should be that the ‘earning curve’ was no more working in the absence of its ability to distribute spoils. The party should go back to the basics: There is no alternative to organisational reforms; the sooner the Congress leadership wakes up to it, the better the chances of the party's rejuvenation become.

The writer is an author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice. Views expressed are personal.

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