Posting the full NVS article below, but i am just wondering if the western string-pullers of the UPA would dare to escalate beyond the political as they did after their catholic puppets in Vietnam used up their grace period...
Quote:Dead-end Congress?
The time for non-dynastic political parties has finally arrived, says N.V.Subramanian.
If you consider the troubles of the Congress and BJP at a remove, you could forecast that one of them will survive its present crisis but the other may not unless it transforms itself. Yes, the BJP will overcome its current struggles and emerge stronger. But the Congress party will etiolate and die if it does not shed its dynastic organization and structure.
For any organization but specially a political party to come to power repeatedly, its leadership must be strong, effective and visionary. The Congress party had a dynamic and visionary leader in Jawaharlal Nehru and a powerful ruling deity in Indira Gandhi, who was not accidentally called Durga after her Bangladesh War victory.
Rajiv Gandhi was their less-than-able inheritor. The Congress was rescued from total decline by P.V.Narasimha Rao who, of course, to avenge the slights inflicted on him by the party's North Indian leadership effectively decimated the organization in the North, particularly in UP and Bihar. The Congress has not recovered from that body blow.
Two BJP-NDA terms under A.B.Vajpayee's able prime-ministership delayed the decline of the dynastic Congress, which unexpectedly came to power in 2004 (Pranab Mukherjee was most surprised by this) and still more incredibly in 2009. Because Sonia Gandhi was unsure of Rahul Gandhi, who was anyway too young to be PM, she found a loyal and honest proxy in Manmohan Singh.
Manmohan Singh has proved a disastrous PM. Unless a PM is powerful -- or as powerful as parliamentary democracy permits -- the office is devalued and the government collapses. In the matter of governance, you cannot have division of authority. Much is already known on the subject to write more.
A proxy PM was needed because Rahul Gandhi was not ready. He is not ready yet and may never be. He would be an even more disastrous prime minister than Manmohan Singh and he knows it. In short, the Congress does not have a worthy dynastic PM to lead it to power again and keep it growing strong for a generation.
Success, it is said, has many fathers but failure is an orphan. The previous successes of the Congress launched other political dynasties. The DMK, NCP, Badal Akali Dal, Shiv Sena, National Conference, RJD, SP and so on are all dynastic parties. But at least some of these dynastic parties came out of the Congress or stood in opposition to it. In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress is being choked by one of its own, the late Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy's son, Jagan.
That, however, is not the entire story. A combination of factors has begun blighting dynastic parties nationwide. The SP, RJD, Shiv Sena, DMK, etc, have either been routed in elections or face deeply troubled futures. They are also ensnared in corruption cases. And one of the worst examples of dynastic governance is provided by Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir whose staunchest critics are to be found in his own party.
If you notice, the fate of the regional dynastic parties is slowly but surely coming to be shared by that supreme dynastic party at the Centre. The Congress-led UPA 2 government is the most corrupt since 1947. And in the anti-corruption wave courtesy Anna Hazare sweeping the country, the corrupt leadership of the Congress/ UPA 2 won't be spared.
What may have saved the dynastic Congress is if it had a dynamic and visionary scion to lead it to new glory. It does not have that. That phase truly ended with Indira Gandhi. A proxy PM brings an advantage of making corrupt monies in the background. But Anna Hazare and an awakened nation shan't tolerate that anymore.
So where is the scope of the Congress continuing as before?
The natural logic of things ensures that it will have to die unless it reinvents itself as a wholesome non-dynastic party in which a Lok Sabha-elected PM governs independent of the Gandhis.
Is that possible?
No. But without that, the Congress is finished.
Which is why, for all its niggling ailments, the BJP is not a hopeless case. A national non-dynastic party is still a work in progress, and the BJP should be viewed as such. It will have leadership squabbles and umpteen PM candidates. But it will sort out.
True, the overwhelming RSS control of the BJP muddies the waters. But believe it or not, that is also changing. For L.K.Advani's yatra to be inaugurated by Nitish Kumar is a major development with wide consequences. Unless the Congress matches this by telling the Gandhis to ease off, it will run aground sooner than later.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi).