Congress Undemocratic Ideology - 4

[ramana]

Something is churning in INC inner circles:



The war within

28 July 2010: While the government successfully has managed the Delhi media to make the united opposition campaign in Parliament against price rise a non-event, the Congress party is proving harder to tame, with fast-paced structural changes in the leadership feeding the frenzy against the wayward economic policies of Manmohan Singh & Co. The order gagging Congress leaders from speaking against government policies is keeping the war within from blowing out. But it is not clear how long dissenting leaders can be silenced, especially when they see the party's future prospects disintegrating.....



Anyhow, the Congress party today broadly is divided into two camps: those that are in government and those that are not. Camps, perhaps, is a strong word because the division is not formal in any sense although it is slowly becoming pronounced. Those in the government and therefore ipso facto in that camp want to preserve the status quo. There are exceptions to this. Pranab Mukherjee is one, who still commands wide respect within Congress party circles. Then there are ministers like Jairam Ramesh who prefer their closeness or perceived closeness to the Congress leadership more than any government position, which anyway does not reward their brilliance or dedication. Many of the other ministers do not want to rock the boat, regardless of who leads the government, for reasons of power and jobbery.



Just as the government camp has no leader (power bringing its own glue and purpose), so the Congress non-government grouping has no designated chief, although Digvijay Singh is becoming fairly active in that circle. Digvijay's power draws from his two terms as Madhya Pradesh chief minister when he dealt directly with the Congress central leadership without intermediaries. As Rahul Gandhi's political advisor, Digvijay Singh has further entrenched himself. Congress insiders say that only Digvijay has the kind of clout that permits him to take on the Union home minister, P.Chidambaram, and his counter-Naxal policies, and get away. "Anyone else saying all that would have had his head chopped off by now," said a keen party observer.



Two fundamentally significant developments have strengthened the hands of the Congress group vis-a-vis the government camp. The first is that the Manmohan Singh government has lost its moral authority following the deep distortions produced by its Washington Consensus economic model, one of whose consequences is the runaway food and fuel inflation. Despite the worst attempts of the government to divide the opposition, it has not succeeded. For the second day today, Parliament has shut down on the price rise issue. Congress party leaders are not unhappy at the crisis faced by the government, and they wouldn't be bothered if the government fell. Because with the current economic policies of Manmohan Singh, they know they stand nil chance of reelection. "We are abused when we go to our constituencies," a Union cabinet minister was heard telling some senior Congress leaders. Indeed, Mani Shankar Aiyar's vitriolic attack on the Commonwealth Games (perfectly justified, in this writer's view), and his allegations of corruption by the Games' organizing committee (its venal face being Suresh Kalmadi), reflect both general discontent of the party and particular resentment against Manmohan Singh's economic policies. It is no exaggeration to say that the PM and his rightist economy policy czar, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, are loathed in Congress party circles.



The second development that has strengthened the party group against the government is the leadership transition in the Congress. Sonia Gandhi, the party president, has moved to the National Advisory Council (NAC), where she will put checks on government policy. In this, the Congress leadership hopes to be both the ruling and the opposition force, a ploy which may or may not work. But in transferring to the NAC, Sonia Gandhi has verily vacated the political space for Rahul Gandhi. This has jolted the coterie around Sonia which feels orphaned and it has put the government camp on notice. On the other hand, politicians like Digvijay Singh who are close to Rahul Gandhi find themselves strengthened. The party bigshots would not matter if the government was delivering. But the fact that the Manmohan Singh government is tottering after barely a year in power has shocked the leadership and strengthened the anti-government lobby within the Congress party.



As of last week, there were strong whisperings that Manmohan Singh would be promoted as President of India and Pranab Mukherjee brought in his place as interim prime minister till Rahul Gandhi was ready. This writer does not believe Rahul Gandhi can run this country for a day considering the enormous complexities of India, and that is the rub. With the failure of a technocrat like Manmohan Singh, one would imagine the Congress leadership looking at the issue of prime-ministership with dispassion, clarity and wisdom. The dynasty experiment failed with Rajiv Gandhi and it will wreck with his son, but the country seems condemned to it. Meanwhile, the Congress and government leadership have come to believe that no news (about the opposition and peoples' agitation against the unprecedented price rise) is good news. Managing the media (whose current credibility crisis eventually will destroy it) is a lot easier than fixing elections, and terrified Congress grassroots leaders know that only too well.