HVK Archives: IE: "A last chance for revival" by Amulya Ganguli
IE: "A last chance for revival" by Amulya Ganguli - The Indian Express
Amulya Ganguli
()
3 October 1996
Title : A last chance for revival
Author : Amulya Ganguli
Publication : The Indian Express
Date : October 3, 1996
There is a medical concept about a condition becoming worse before it can
get better. Perhaps the Congress is nearing the end of the first stage
and, if it can keep its nerve, may be able to begin the process of
recovery. To do so, however, it will have to jettison much of its recent
past and start on a clean slate, as it were.
Normally, such a surgical process is painful because the past cannot be
cut away easily. The Congress should be thankful therefore, that the
judiciary is doing the surgeon's job for it by identifying the corrupt and
terminating their public careers, to nobody's regret. This very process,
of course, is pulling the Congress further down in public esteem for, as
the guilty are paraded before the ubiquitous television cameras and packed
off the jail, the party's image inevitably suff- ers.
But that is a price the Congress has to pay considering that when some of
its members raked in the loot, those few in the organisation who are still
honest and care for the party should have known that such brazenness could
not last and that the truth will come out one day. Indeed, whether it was
Bofors or St Kitts or Chandraswa- mi's charmed life, the truth was known -
or at least suspected - all the time which is why the Congress paid a
political price in elections even if the individual suspects were not
arraigned. The only difference now is that the suspicions are being
confirmed.
To what extent the current judicial spring cleaning will purify the party
is not known, but it will at least make the corrupt wary. Previously, they
strutted about, secure in the belief that the investigative agencies have
been rendered inoperative by their political masters. But now they know
that the levers of control are slipping out of their hands. This has been
a salutary lesson not only for the Congress, but for the entire political
class.
In Mumbai, for instance, Bal Thackeray discovered to his utter surprise
that the Shiv Sainiks were no longer beyond the reach of the law when his
nephew was ques- tioned by the CID in connection with Ramesh Kini's death.
Something which had not happened in the long years of Congress rule in
Maharashtra took place when the Hindu Hriday Samrat's own government was
in power. And now the matter has been taken out of the CID's hands
altogether by the High Court and placed under the CBI's jurisdic- tion.
Politics is no longer the fun it used to be.
In the Congress's case, the promptness with which the party washed its
hands of Sukh Ram showed that the sur- vival instinct is at work. It is
now clear as daylight that to carry on as a credible political force, the
Congress will have to cut its links with the shady char- acters in its
midst, no matter what exalted posts they once held. If it does not, the
party will go down with them.
The situation calls for those who have managed, against all odds, to
remain honest to come to the forefront.
Their number may not be negligible. They may have been overshadowed all
these years by the crooks and wheeler- dealers, who are naturally more
energetic, but a party which still secures the highest percentage of votes
in a general election cannot comprise only racketeers. Clear- ly, all is
not lost yet.
The mistake which the honest made was to allow themselves to be
browbeaten. But they probably did not have much of a chance considering
that the party's decline was par- ticularly rapid in the last two decades,
beginning with the rise of the Sanjay brigade in 1975-76 when democracy
was put on hold to bolster the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Nearly all the ills
which trouble the party today can trace their origins to that time -
lumpenisation under the direct auspices of the enfant terrible, the
breakdown of organisational hierarchies, the subversion of the law and
order system.
The party never really recovered after that. It has gone steadily downhill
since with the crony raj reaching its zenith under Rajiv. The St Kitts
episode in which Nara- simha Rao has become embroiled belongs to that
disgrace- ful period in Congress history.
It may not be too far-fetched to suggest that the Con- gress has now got a
historic opportunity to revive it- self. This may be its last chance, and
so the party must be careful that it does not squander it. Not only is
its main failing of corruption being tackled by the judici- ary, the
sleaze factor evident in the Bofors deal and in the St Kitts forgery case
may also help it to distance itself from the dynasty, putting an end to
the unhealthy trend which bred shameless sycophancy and prevented party
workers with genuine leadership qualities to come to the forefront.
If the period of Emergency saw the party become hostage to "one and half
leaders", as Jagjivan Ram subsequently found courage to say, it also saw
the Congress deviating from its time-honoured principles because petty
minded politicians had assumed power. The negation of democracy meant
that other values could be sacrificed as well at the altar of expediency
and one of the most cherished ideals of the Congress which suffered as a
result is that of secularism.
In a way, one reason apart from corruption why the party is in such dire
straits is that it alienated a major section of its supporters. including
the liberal intelli- gentsia, by its failure to understand why its appeal
had such a broad base. It is not impossible that the return of the honest
to positions of authority will also mean that the ideals which the
Congress has been neglecting will once again guide its policies, paving
the way for a revival.
The time is also opportune. The Congress may harbour the largest number
of tainted politicians, but the judicial scrutiny has revealed that the
other parties also do not comprise only holy men. What is more, while the
earlier intense antipathy towards the Congress among its oppon- ents has
abated, the political clout of its traditional rivals has also diminished.
A major reason for this change is' that the people have had an opportunity
to see the other parties in action also.
Earlier it used to be easy for the Congress's adversaries to adopt a
holier-than-thou attitude. The communists, for instance, used to portray
the Congress virtually as the Kuomintang of India from whose evil grasp
the people of India had to be liberated. Theirs was a visceral dislike of
the Congress which totally ignored what Nehru identi- fied as the main
threat to Indian unity - Hindu communal- ism. The last two decades of the
communists being in power in West Bengal, and for limited periods in
Kerala and Tripura, have changed all that. Now they are regard- ed as
little different from the Congressmen. The same is true of the BJP, which
had partly replaced the communists as the great hope of the middle class
even in West Ben- gal.
More than ideology, it is the promise to provide a clean and stable
government which interests the Indian voter. He is wary of anyone who
tries to use caste or communal factors to win support. The Congress's main
advantage lies in its tradition (which it foolishly neglected) of
appealing to all communities on the basis of a common Indian nationhood.
It is a simple concept but requires undiluted honesty for its
implementation. Only the fair- minded can be liberal, not the bigots or
the crooks. If the scamsters are ousted, the Congress's recovery will
automatically follow.
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