In May 2009, the entire media was
celebrating United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) victory in the Lok Sabha
election and was busy in predicting Congress majority in 2014 with Rahul Gandhi
as party’s Prime Ministerial candidate. Within a span of four and half years,
there is a 360 degree turn in media’s sentiments. However, media is only an
indicator of the public mood in general, if not in specific. The Congress was
buoyant in 2009 with whopping 206 seats in its kitty while the principal
opposition, Bhartiya Janata Party was in disarray and the principle opposition
– the Left in complete shambles. Since 2009, neither the Left has rediscovered
its role nor the BJP was quick to put its house in order. Yet, everything went
against the Congress interest while its leadership displayed supreme arrogance
towards parliamentary opposition and movements on the street under the pretext
that neither of them have any ‘electoral democratic’ legitimacy. Following are
the 10 things where Congress committed mistakes and is now bleeding with the
unprecedented electoral defeats.
1. Inertia in its Foreign Policy: The 2009 election took place in the
background of 2 prominent foreign policy issues. One was Indo-US nuclear deal
and the other was Pakistan’s role in 26/11. The people were convinced that
under Dr. Manmohan Singh’s leadership country’s foreign policy has obtained a
direction and decisiveness. However, in last 4 and half years there is hardly
any forward movement in country’s foreign policy. The Indo-US relations have
not moved ahead after the operationalization of the nuclear deal and Indo-Pak
relations are rotting at the same place since 2009. India’s policy with its
neighbours is in the doldrums with New Delhi losing out inch by inch on each
occasion. UPA-2 has lost the glorious opportunity to build up on the friendly
ties with Bangla Desh and gain a solid ally in the region. In the process,
UPA-2 has also lost out Mamata Banerjee who had sabotaged the Teesta Water
agreement with Dhaka. Similarly, Indian government wanted to keep the Tamil
parties happy on the issue of human rights violations in Sri Lanka. However, it
has made the Lankan government unhappy and all of the Tamil parties in Tamil
Nadu have drifted away from UPA-2. With regard to taking forward the peace
process with Pakistan, Dr. Manmohan Singh was always under the shadow of feared
right-wing onslaught and hence did not show the courage. This has not stopped
the re-ascendency of the right wing BJP at the national level but even the
liberal critics are pointing out that Atal Bihari Vajpeyee was more
forthcoming, bold and innovative on Kashmir as well as on relations with
Pakistan. UPA-2 government’s non-committal attitude is uninspiring for the
aspirational Indians and has given out the impression of a weak central
government. This is a tragedy number 1 which could have been easily avoided
with a focussed and determined leadership of the MEA.
2. Flip-Flop on Ramdev: It is still a mystery why did
team of cabinet ministers received Ramdev at Delhi airport when he arrived to launch
agitation against the UPA government. The same ministers indulged in a
prolonged dialogue with him. However, the love got lost between them and the
UPA government forcefully removed Ramdev and his supporters from the Ram Lila
maidan. These flip-flops indicated government’s inability to take firm
decisions, adding to overall perception of misgovernment and indecisiveness.
3. Misreading of the Public Mood: Congress could not grasp the
intensity of people’s anger after the 16th December, 2012 Nirbhaya
case. It was unnecessarily on the defensive wherein it should have asked its
local leaders and cadres to mobilize people and participate in expressing anger
against the misdeed. However, it was a classic case of an establishment losing
touch with the subjects. Post-Nirbhaya case, Congress has done little to
project its young women leadership neither has it done anything concrete to
showcase its concern over women’s safety and dignity.
4. Mismanagement with the Allies: Congress lost its strongest ally,
Trinamul Congress for no reasons. It was a sheer mismanagement of relations
from the side of Congress managers. In fact, no one seems to be in charge of
managing the allies in Congress party. In Tamil Nadu, the Congress is without
allies now. In both these states, Congress is a marginal player and going into
Lok Sabha election without allies means losing out even before the start of the
race. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu-Puduchery contribute respectively 42 and 40
seats to the Lok Sabha tally. At the other end, UPA government walked an extra
mile to help out Lalu Prasad Yadav when it brought out an ordinance nullifying
Supreme Court decision on tainted representatives. It neither helped Congress
in terms of securing any benefits in Bihar nor at the national level. On the
contrary, the ordinance and turn about on it became a matter of major
embarrassment for the party before important assembly elections in 5 states.
5. Inability to Remove Tainted Leaders: Congress leadership showed lots of
reluctance in taking action against tainted leaders. As result, the actions
taken by it were seen as compulsions and happened due to pressures from
opposition parties and people in general. This gave the impression that leaving
to itself, Congress would not initiate action against its tainted leaders.
Congress leadership wasted almost a full session of parliament but did not
accept opposition’s demand to remove Pawan Bansal and Ashwini Kumar from the
Union Cabinet. However, once parliament session is over, it sacked them from
the ministry. Similarly, much maligned Suresh Kalmadi was not removed from his
official positions neither been sacked from the party for a long, which has
dented the party’s anti-corruption credibility beyond repair. Moreover,
Congress was quick to reinstate the sacked leaders at the first opportunity.
Shashi Tharur is back in the Union Ministry so as Ashwini Kumar was allocated a
Cabinet level position as Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to Japan. Abhishek
Manu Singhavi who was removed as party spokesperson over his alleged sexual
misconduct is back in the same position while Narayan Datt Tiwari is still in
the Congress Party. These developments have convincingly given impression that
Congress is not at all serious about removing corruption and upholding personal
probity in public life. In fact, Congress was under the misperception that
public memory is quite short, which, in deed, is not!
6. Mishandling of State Situations: Congress was able to cross the 200
mark in the Lok Sabha mainly because of its best performances in states of
Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Uttarakhand. These 5 states
have sent more than 80 Congress MPs to Lok Sabha in 2009. However, the party
has lost credibility in all of these states one by one. In Uttarakhand,
Congress won all 5 Lok Sabha seats and in the subsequent assembly election
dislodged BJP government in the state. However, in selecting its Chief Minister
the party has given weightage to Darbar credentials and ignored the leaders
with wide network and mass appeal. Anointment of Vijaya Bahuguna as leader of
CLP ignoring strong claims of Harish Rawat has not gone down well with the
activists and people alike. In Delhi, it has given free hand to Sheila Dixit
who misread and mishandled each and every crisis. Now, Congress is weeping with
blood over Delhi assembly results and its kitty of 7 Lok Sabha MPs from the
city-state is also in grave danger. In Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot administration
slept for well over 3 years and started doling out sops only at the fag end of
its tenure. Congress had the golden opportunity to strengthen its
organizational hold in the state as BJP was marred with infighting for most of
the period. However, the laid back attitude of the Congress has led the party
to a situation wherein it has to fight to save at least 4-5 Lok Sabha seats in
the state out of the odd 20 that it won in 2009. In Uttar Pradesh, Congress
surprised everyone, or might be it also got surprised, as it won 22 Lok Sabha
seats and emerged as number 1 party in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. All credit
to this unexpected victory was given to Rahul Gandhi and it was expected that
he would lead the party to a spectacular come back in the assembly election.
But that was not to happen, thanks to gross misreading of social equations in
the state. An under-graduate student of Indian politics too knows it very well
that Dalits in U.P. will not ditch Mayawati, particularly for the Congress
party. Yet, Rahul Gandhi’s entire emphasis was to build an alliance of Dalit,
OBCs and Muslims in the state. He has failed to understand the ground dynamics
of tensions between OBCs and Dalits that have drifted Mulayam and Mayawati
forever from each other. As a result, OBCs did not turn up to the grand old
party and Dalits were not at all interested in voting for anyone than BSP. As
Muslims could see that Congress was not able to build a cohesive social
alliance, it voted for Samajwadi Party almost en mass. The constituency
to grab in the U.P. was Brahmins and then to build a Brahmin-Muslim alliance.
This could have been a beginning of party’s resurgence in India’s largest
state. Now, it is struggling to come up with a strategy to secure at least half
of the Lok Sabha seats that it won in 2009. Andhra Pradesh tops the list of
Congress misdeeds and misreading in last four and half years. After the
accidental death of its popular leader YSR Reddy, it failed to judge the
support for his son Jagan Reddy among people as well as in the organization.
After rejecting his claim over Chief Ministership, the high command selected
such a person for the top position who has not only become completely
irrelevant today but no one even remembers his name outside his home state.
Congress lost the opportunity to take a high moral ground that it is not
encouraging dynasty politics. Then, UPA government made all of its flip-flops
over Telengana which has jeopardized the entire state’s administration.
Congress is now in the fight on only 17 seats in Telengana, just half of the
number it won in 2009. All such developments have taken out shine from Congress
leadership and resulted in loss of credibility of its leaders.
7. Mysterious Rahul: Rahul Gandhi should have become a
minister in the UPA-2 government. This would give him a platform to showcase his
administrative abilities, implementation of programmes and visionary
initiatives, if any. However, his constant refusal on non-participation gave
way to the impression that he has been avoiding responsibilities. His elevation
as party Vice-President when he did not have much to show case sent out a wrong
signal outside the party. It meant that power would be concentrated in the
Nehru-Gandhi family for another 2 to 4 decades at least. Moreover, silence on
prime ministerial candidate but all indications towards Rahul Gandhi by the
Congress leaders literally meant that in the future he would be no. 1 in the
government as well as in the party. This was un-inspirational not only for the
common people but also for the Congress workers. Message to the country at
large was that Rahul must be crowned as a supreme leader only because of his
virtue of born in the Nehru-Gandhi family. At this juncture, this is not
acceptable to the people.
8. Directionless Economy: UPA-2 government failed to build up
on the momentum created during its first term as a result of mixure of economic
reforms and welfare schemes. Government’s 3 most flaunted initiatives, i.e.
allowing FDI in Retail, Food Security Act and Land Acquisition Act failed to
generate any kind of enthusiasm and optimism. The FDI in retail was resented by
the traders and shop-keepers while Congress could not garner support of
intended beneficiaries of proposed policies, i.e. the service sector oriented
middle class and farmers. The food security act was welcomed by the wide
spectrum of the political parties, however, there is nothing much that the poor
would get from this act except the right to knock the doors of the judiciary
for denial of food security. Almost all the state governments are already
running various food schemes for the poor, therefore, the new act added value
to it on the paper but not much would change for the poor on the ground. Moreover,
the complete implementation of the Food Security Act can become reality only
after the upcoming general election. Just like this act, the Land Acquisition
Act was enacted too late giving the impression that Congress is doing all these
only to get votes on the promise that the Acts would be implemented only if it
returns to power. Its other schemes such as Direct Cash Transfer etc have not
seen light of the day in most of the states.
9. Grand Fall of Brand Manmohan: The honest politician, Dr. Manmohan
Singh’s silences over many crucial issues or his non-initiatives to resolve
deadlock with the opposition have not gone down well with the public. On the
top of it, what destroyed Prime Minister’s grand standing was his often
emphasizing on compulsions of coalition politics. The people have seen
that Dr. Singh did not care about coalitions or consensus when it came to
pushing his favorite policies such as FDI in retail on nuclear deal but
lamented about coalition politics when it comes to curbing the corruption. Dr.
Singh’s failure to reign in ministers like D. Raja or his reluctance to
constitute JPC to probe 2-G scams presented him as a puppet in the hands of
Nehru-Gandhi family rather than a man with moral values.
10. Dilly-dallying tactics on Lokpal
Bill: It was a
matter of principle! If you accept that institution of Lokpal is necessary to
curb the corruption, create the institution with the mandate at your hand. The
other position would have been that Lokpal is a misconstrued concept which
would not curtail the scams at the higher level. However, neither Congress nor
any other political party has taken this stand. Thus, the onus was on the
ruling coalition to enact the legislation at the earliest, particularly after
the massive movement that took place for it. However, for most of the time
Congress paid only a lip service to the Lokpal bill and impression gathered by
the people was that it was effectively using allies like RJD and SP to scuttle
the enactment of Lokpal Law. Moreover, Congress led the political parties’
onslaught against the movement for Lokpal under the pretext that the movement
or the leaders of the movement do not carry people’s mandate with them. More
importantly, thrust of its argument was that only election could be considered
as the legitimate means of expressing people’s interest in the democracy and
agitations et al have been detrimental to the health of democracy. This
position was a rape of the democracy and people have given capital
punishment to the party for committing this sin. After Aam Adami Party’s
breakthrough performance in the Delhi assembly election, the ruling UPA and
main opposition, BJP had shown alarming haste in passing the Lokpal Bill in the
Parliament. But its too late now!
All together, these 10 mistakes are costing a lot to the grand old
party. First of all, it has given space to Narendra Modi in national politics.
Secondly, it has helped in building credibility of Aam Aadmi Party. As a
result, Congress is facing its third crisis of survival in post-Indira Gandhi
phase. The first phase was between 1989-91 when it was challenged by V.P.
Singh’s politics on one hand and Sangh Parivar’s politics on the other hand.
The second phase started immediately after Rajiv Gandhi’s death in 1991 but got
accentuated post-1996 after the loss of power at the centre. This phase lasted for
almost 8 years, i.e. from 1996 to 2004. While the first phase gave rise to
regional caste based parties in north India and BJP at the national level, the
second phase has consolidated the position of caste based regional parties and
BJP. Now, in the third phase of crisis for the Congress, rise of the Aam Aadmi
Party is an imminent fact. However, the AAP threatens not only the Congress but
also the caste-based regional parties and dented Narendra Modi-led BJP’s
credibility as the clean and only alternative in Indian politics. In the short
run, Congress will be at the receiving end of the AAP’s popularity. In the long
run, all the established political parties will suffer at the hands of the AAP.
This process was bound to happen but only got aggravated due to the mistakes
committed by Congress during UPA-2 rule.
