No takers for Gandhi family covenant

Rajesh Ramachandran

FOR long, there existed a contract between the Nehru-Gandhi family and the average Congressman/woman for seeking and sharing power. The family guaranteed its camp followers and minions positions of power, right from municipal councillors at the grassroots level to Union Cabinet ministers at the apex. In return, the first family sought absolute loyalty and an unchallenged ownership of the entire Congress political enterprise. The Gandhis’ status was not that of primus inter pares — they were no earthly ‘first among equals’, but more like divinely ordained lords of yore.

If the Congress does not offer space to its alliance partners to fight the BJP and win as many seats as possible, it will end up ruing a lost opportunity.

This contract began with the first Prime Minister, who was a legitimate legatee of the freedom movement and the tallest standard-bearer of the nation-building mission. Unlike Nehru, his daughter was thrown out of the Congress twice, and on both occasions, she built her own party, making it a lasting success. So, the contract with Indira Gandhi was a personal one for Congress activists who sought power. And soon this contract became a family inheritance. After Rajiv and Sonia, now their children as inheritors are trying to enforce this agreement without realising that the terms of the contract have changed and so have the parties involved.

First of all, Rahul Gandhi’s Congress cannot guarantee success to any municipal councillor, let alone 272 MPs in the Lok Sabha. In fact, Rahul may not even contest his own family borough in Amethi and may have to seek refuge again in the Muslim-majority Wayanad seat in Kerala. There is a lot of talk in Himachal Pradesh about Sonia or Priyanka getting nominated to the Rajya Sabha from the Himalayan state, which again is a sign of panic over Rae Bareli slipping out of the family’s grip this time around. Sonia’s 2014 margin of victory in Rae Bareli had got halved in the 2019 polls.

So, the first family has lost its invincible, ethereal aura. It is now only a unique, celebrity political family that has remained in power for four generations directly or indirectly (counting Motilal Nehru, five generations at the very top of the country’s politics), but without the personal charisma to win their own constituencies or lead a national party to victory. The primary premise of the contract has changed. Yet, the Gandhis want to behave even with coalition partners the way they used to behave with family retainers. What is good for Mallikarjun Kharge, the Gandhis’ nominee, will obviously not be good enough for Nitish Kumar or Mamata Banerjee or HD Deve Gowda.

Nitish’s umpteenth U-turn to abandon the INDIA bloc that he nurtured and rejoin the BJP-led NDA is the latest proof of the Rahul-Congress contract not being acceptable to the existing and potential coalition leaders. Each one of them has come up in politics fighting the Congress and making space for themselves. There are stories aplenty of former Congress president Sitaram Kesri meanly pushing Mamata out of the party and the Gandhis refusing to accommodate her. So, it is naïve to expect Mamata to honour any contract to make the Gandhis powerful or their nominee the Prime Minister, unless she herself is that nominee.

Similar is the case with Nitish and Gowda. While Nitish is the product of the anti-Indira movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s, Gowda as Prime Minister was backstabbed and pulled down by the Congress in 1997. Even the CPI(M) is locked in an existential political battle with the Congress in Kerala, notwithstanding the personal relationship its general secretary Sitaram Yechury might have with Rahul. The Kerala police regularly, mercilessly beat up Congress workers and they, in turn, accuse the CP(I)M of seeking the BJP’s help to keep Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in power. Curiously, Vijayan has received kid-gloves treatment from Central investigating agencies despite a plethora of corruption cases against him.

So, there is no real reason for any existing or future coalition partner to honour the Gandhi family covenant. It is indeed a strange political situation on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, where it is every man for himself and the BJP against them all. Everyone is in it first to maximise their seats in the Lok Sabha and then aim for the prime ministership. If Nitish is not made the PM candidate, he has no use for the INDIA bloc, and if Mamata has to give away precious seats to Congress and the CPI(M), the alliance will be counterproductive for the Trinamool Congress (TMC). If Rahul’s car is getting hit by stones in West Bengal, it is the TMC guarding its turf against encroachment. The Congress is only building Rahul’s image with the election-eve Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, instead of strengthening the coalition. For instance, if the Congress sweeps Kerala, as is expected, the CPI(M) will become inconsequential in national politics.

But the Congress does not acknowledge the existential dilemma of its partners or rather refuses to play the role of a coalition-builder. All its efforts are going into building up Rahul as a national alternative to PM Modi with the same attitude and arrogance of a party in power. If it does not offer space to its alliance partners to fight the BJP and win as many seats as possible, it will end up ruing a lost opportunity. The Congress cannot afford to piggyback on its allies in states where it is weak. Just as the Samajwadi Party or TMC or AAP should not be seeking seats in Himachal Pradesh, Telangana or Chhattisgarh or any other electorally bipolar state, the Congress needs to listen to Mamata in Bengal.

As for accusing Nitish of opportunism, well, there are not many who have not been betrayed by the Congress — from Charan Singh and Chandra Shekhar to Gowda and IK Gujral — and then, of course, the CPI(M), whose pre-eminence was wrecked forever by the Congress’ alliance with the TMC in the 2011 West Bengal Assembly polls. So, the Congress needs to seriously rework its coalition strategy to make its allies equal partners rather than house retainers.

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