Life beyond the Gandhis

A time for a change

Satraajit Palcchoudhury

The rout of Congress in 2014 from the political landscape of India has placed the party in an embarrassing situation. The Gandhi scion has failed miserably to emerge as an alternative to Narendra Modi. Many analyses will be done now to strike out the root causes of the party’s dismal performance. The Hindi heartland has out rightly rejected Congress.

Why it has happened? What the party should do now to regain its lost glory? These questions are certainly disturbing Madam Sonia Gandhi as well. She has tried her best to promote her son in the corridors of power but the bitter truth is that— Rahul neither has the tenacity nor the capacity to lead the party from the front.

However, to be more specific it should be accepted that Rahul Gandhi is an ‘escapist’. Probably these strong adjectives will not go down well with the die hard followers of the Gandhi dynasty, but this is the ultimate truth and dear readers as you know truth is always bitter. Having said that the vital question that the Congress is confronting today is, after this devastating defeat ‘what lies ahead of our party’? 

First of all the concept of intra-party democracy is not at all visible in Congress compared to its bête noire BJP. At least, in BJP there is room for individual meritocracy. The emergence of Modi stands testimony to this observation. In BJP an ordinary party worker can dream of becoming either a chief minister or a prime minister. But in Congress the chair of ‘Prime Minister’ is reserved for the Gandhis. This is certainly not at all acceptable.

We are already noticing the hapless plight of the Chief Minister of Assam. He is facing extreme difficulties in reining in his bunch of detractors led by his aide-turned-foe Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma. The defeat of Congress has given birth to internal bickering within the party. One leader from Kerala dared to criticize ‘Rahul’ and he was suspended from the party.

The main enemy of Rahul Gandhi is his sycophants. He needs to get himself out from the shackles of his sycophants. Lord Meghnad Desai even predicted that Congress will disintegrate after the Lok Sabha elections. By looking at the sorry state of affairs in Assam it seems that Meghnad Desai’s prediction is going to come true. Some block level leaders have already started changing their gears and are trying to shift their allegiance to the saffron parivar. Now, it would be apt to strike out the core reasons as to why Congress has suffered such a humiliating defeat in 2014.

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