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Editorial: Still in denial

Congress hasn?t recognised its failures yet

The Congress Working Committee?s first meeting after the party?s crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections yielded little beyond the optics of resignation and refusal. The party faithful refused Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi?s emotional offers to resign, and reaffirmed faith in their leadership. While the Gandhis owned responsibility for the electoral debacle, former prime minister Manmohan Singh took the blame for the failures of government. But for all the soul searching, in the end the Congress only resorted to evasions and obfuscations: noises were made about the need to restructure the party and on the lack of political communication. The party showed little recognition of the substantive failures of its politics and policy that have brought it to this moment of devastation.

There can be no doubt that greater inner party democracy would breathe life into an ossified organisational structure, where posts and election tickets are doled out as political largesse by the high command. But Rahul Gandhi?s campaign pitch of party reform proved too abstract and too inward looking to find resonance with voters in an aggressively contested election. The Congress?s no-show may also be attributed partly to its failure to communicate?the government failed to mount a coherent defence of itself even as it was battered by the courts, the CAG, the opposition and popular street protests. It could not effectively project its own achievements, and very often, state governments run by regional parties walked away with the credit for the UPA?s flagship schemes. But these shortcomings alone cannot account for the most thorough electoral rout the Congress has faced in its history.

The Congress took a stale political message and a dated style of politics to a young and impatient electorate. If it had a forward-looking vision of inclusive governance and growth, it failed to articulate it. Its promises of rights-based governance and subsidies came across as a muddle of freebies and well-meaning schemes hobbled by old infirmities of delivery and implementation. It continued to rely on the political capital of the Gandhis, choosing to stay with the same faces and a centralised high command. While the BJP benefited from robust regional leaderships, the Congress?s state level leaders faded into the background. If the Congress is to regain credibility, it must listen more closely to the people it claims to represent and put together a more persuasive version of itself.

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First published on: 21-05-2014 at 20:44 IST
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