With their backs up against the wall and in a crisis, resilient organisations are expected to run a tight ship. But in politics, if the organisation lacks a strong glue, there are enough malcontents to weaken it from within. The Congress finds itself in such a situation today. Beleaguered and limited to power on its own in only three major States — Rajasthan, Punjab and Chhattisgarh — the Congress should have focused on utilising the period in power to provide good governance and to inspire successes elsewhere. Since nothing succeeds like success, working together to achieve a functioning government is an imperative. But far from backing the respective Chief Ministers to the hilt, leaders in the Congress have tried to take on the mantle of rebellion to varying degrees of success. In Rajasthan, Sachin Pilot’s rebellion against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was managed last year, but no viable compromise between the two has been reached yet. In Punjab, despite being an import after a stint in the BJP, former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu managed to wrest the position of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president by mobilising enough discontent against Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. Now chafing, Capt. Amarinder’s allies have sought their utmost to undermine Mr. Sidhu’s leadership in another round of internecine strife. In Chhattisgarh, Health Minister T.S. Singh Deo’s claim that he was supposed to get the Chief Minister’s post as “promised” to him halfway into the government’s tenure, has not yet been accepted by the party high command which, however, seems unwilling to back the incumbent, Bhupesh Baghel.
In none of these instances can a claim be made that the incumbent government’s performance has warranted a change. The rebellions, therefore, can be attributed to the personal ambitions of three leaders and not even to traditional factional politics related to ideological differences. There has been a lot of focus on the party’s national leadership and a concentration of power in the Nehru-Gandhi family, but the more pressing problem it confronts is the absence of a clear ideological commitment that draws leaders and cadre into closer coordination and camaraderie. By drawing from its history as the party that led the country to freedom and helped work out a constitutional consensus and a liberal democratic polity, besides its legacy since the 1990s as the party that pushed for economic reforms and welfare-based governance as the twin pedestals for progress, the Congress can still lay a strong claim to power. For that it must have a committed cadre that is willing to selflessly work toward that aim rather than rely upon self-seeking leaders professing vapid centrism, and for whom power is the overarching motive.
