Congress Undemocratic Ideology - 4

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Cong would find it difficult to reverse tideJanuary 27, 2011 4:19:49 AM



Sidharth Mishra



On the day Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the reshuffle of his Cabinet, I was on train for a 24 hour journey. A colleague from the office started to text me the PTI takes as they flashed the changes. I shared the information with three other passengers who shared the coupe with me. There was a unanimous reaction from them, “Is this some reshuffle? This Government just doesn’t want to take any risk.”



Over the years I have come to believe that the passengers of the Indian Railway provide a good indicator of the nation’s mood. Be it the local or the long-distance trains, their passengers give a near perfect analysis of the prevailing situation, which at times may have to be modulated according to the class one is travelling in. I still recall travelling in Buxar-Ara-Patna local shuttle train service at the height of the campaign for the 1996 Lok Sabha polls.



An year earlier, Lalu Prasad Yadav had done well to handsomely retain power in 1995 Vidhan Sabha elections and he was once again pitted to give Janata Dal the highest number of seats from Bihar. During this local train journey, I was privy to some very deeply analytical discussion on why Lalu Yadav’s caste combination, which gave the party such lead in 1995 Assembly polls, has started to wither on a bigger level. The discussion concluded with a very philosophical line from the elderly among the group of discussants. The gentleman said, “Ekar matlab na Pope (Congress), na Gope (Lalu Yadav), na Tope (Maoists) ke ba hope (This means neither Congress, no Lalu Yadav nor the Maoists have any hope).



The 1996 Lok Sabha polls indeed gave first indication of change in Bihar politics with BJP emerging as a political force and the Samata Party led by Nitish Kumar and George Fernandes started to gather their wits. Bihar in 1996 did not give Lalu Yadav the requisite number of MPs to stake a claim for the Prime Ministership and he had to remain satisfied with first pushing case of HD Deve Gowda and when the latter opened the fodder scam cases against him, he became part of the topple plan which replaced Gowda with Inder Kumar Gujral.



Coming back to the train journey last week, there was unanimity in the opinion that Dr Manmohan Singh doesn’t have the desire to bring a change. When the discussion veered around the fact that he doesn’t have the wherewithal too, it was quickly pointed out that when he wanted the passage of the Nuclear Bill he could afford to risk the support of a strong Left-front. And then the ever present conspiracy theory reared its head. “He is an American agent who wants to impoverish India. He doesn’t have any connect with the people,” said a co-passenger.



Well without casting any aspersions on the loyalty of the Prime Minister to the Indian Constitution, it’s also important that when the hoi-polloi thinks of the head of the Government working at the behest of another sovereign power, it’s a very unfortunate situation and calls for serious introspection. During the first five years, Dr Manmohan Singh lived on the ‘gentleman’ image, which is getting severely dented in the second-term.



His inability to connect with people who spoke language of the aam admi too has been his biggest undoing. To illustrate the point, there was death of a patient caught in traffic bandobast for Prime Minister’s route during the Congress plenary. There was no expression, even routine, either from Dr Singh personally or his office. Dr Singh has seldom responded to human tragedies which have afflicted this nation. His inability to do so is increasingly adding to his alienation from the masses and of his party too.



Another co-passenger was quick to point out that we are back to 1987 kind of situation, when a Government with brute majority in Parliament was reduced to a minority on the streets after the Bofors Scam broke out. Rajiv Gandhi’s inability to act against the scam proved to be his biggest undoing with his name, though after his death, appearing in the chargesheet filed by the CBI in the matter.



Rajiv Gandhi till then had enjoyed immense affection of the people but it all withered within matter of months. His mother too had recorded a resounding victory in 1971 to be reduced to such ebb of popularity that Indira Gandhi was forced to impose Emergency in 1975. Both lost the office of the Prime Minister in the subsequent polls.



I would still want to believe that 2011 is qualitatively different from 1975 and 1987. Both in 1975 and in 1987, there were charioteers in form of Jai Prakash Narayan and Vishwanath Pratap Singh to channelise people’s anger. There is none visible now with whom people may trust their anger.



The Sonia Gandhi-led Congress is lucky that there is yet to emerge somebody in the Opposition ranks who enjoyed the same credibility as JP or VP in their time. But like 1987, in 2011 we have some powerful non-Congress regional leaders who could come together to give the Opposition unity, a push in the electoral field, too. As and when that situation would arise, the Congress would find it absolutely impossible to reverse the tide.