January 24, 2009 and May 13, 2013 might be mere dates for many of us, but for Odisha PCC president Jayadev Jena they might be inscribed in his psyche for eternity. In 2009, with elections six months away he was sacked from the PCC chief post, and in 2013 with a year to go to the elections again, he was back in the saddle as the State party chief. If someone had said that life is a great leveller then probably the political life of Jena is a rollercoaster which has levelled back in about four years. Once written off as an also-ran for PCC leadership, Jena was the proverbial dark horse who came from behind and won the trophy while many stalwarts were being talked about. For the first time probably, the party bosses at 24, Akbar Road had ensured such tight lips that even a whisper of Jayadev becoming PCC president did not do the rounds in Bhubaneswar.
On the day in 2009 when Jayadev stepped down as PCC president, I happened to be present at the Congress Bhawan in Bhubaneswar. The atmosphere in the parking area was tense and closed-door confabulations continued for a long time. Jayadev and then leader of Congress legislature Party Janaki Ballav Patnaik both resigned in tandem to pave the path for a system of one president and three working presidents for the PCC which ultimately cost the party dear at the polls. As news filtered that Jayadev resigned, one saw JB Patnaik get into his car and leave. Jayadev walked out and followed the central AICC observers to the airport to see them off. A pall of gloom seemed to have descended on Jayadev. A man who had worked for four years and eight months, won both the bye-elections then against the BJD, fared well in the panchayat elections was staring at the rug pulled under his feet.
I also happened to be there on May 19, 2013 when Jayadev was felicitated at the Congress Bhawan and took over the responsibilities as PCC president. This time around, the Jayadev Jena I saw was a different person than whom I had seen on the earlier occasions. If he had been the 2004-to-2009 dated incumbent, a certain euphoria and adulation would have been showing on him. But watching him on May 19, he appeared more restrained and less cock-sure than during his earlier stint days. Instead of self-adulation, he spoke of discipline in the party. Instead of pouting grandiose ideas, he spoke of the basic issues troubling common man and the role of the Congress in alleviating the problems. But since one of his sentences made the evening headlines, the rest of the story naturally paled in comparison as sensation won over substance. The breaking news and sound-bites fared better than organisational clarion calls.
The challenges before Jayadev are enormous. On one hand, he has to run with the foxes and hunt with the hounds; on the other, he has to ensure campaign management and raise the pitch of agitations for inspiring credibility among the electorate. Thirdly, he has to identify winnable candidates; and fourthly ensure a respectable performance with an increase of MP seats to the Congress’ kitty. While doing all this, he has to keep the dissenters calm, bring about consensus on party functioning, appoint the PCC and district office-bearers and also keep up to the expectations on organisational work assigned to him by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.
Probably, one of the challenges for the State Congress has been the inability to communicate with the common man and build awareness about the party’s activities. Jayadev needs to undertake regular media briefings at a specified time at least alternatively, if not daily, addressing issues relating to day-to-day emergent matters, programmes of the party, declaration of future initiatives and statements and counterstatements to the ruling BJD. Besides, the challenge is to reorganise the district and State Congress committees with their declaration within a period of 20-30 days as the organisation tends to become defunct after a new PCC president comes in and they await a clear notification regarding the organisation or reorganisation of party office-bearers. He also needs to constitute the booth committees with contact details for authenticating the members. Jayadev also has to strengthen the organisation for election preparedness by forming a steering committee for the election preparedness programme. The need of the hour for the PCC is to prepare a PCC booklet on UPA flagship programmes. Similar booklets are being used by PCC presidents in other States.
Jayadev’s another major challenge would be aligning the party’s frontal organisations, namely, NSUI, Mahila, Youth, Krushak, SC, ST, OBC, Minority, Teachers and Flagship Programmes with the objectives to derive synergy from their actions in the run-up to the general elections. Further, Jayadev would emerge stronger if he were to meet people twice a week in the form of an open meeting for grievance handling along with having a Facebook account and Twitter handle of the PCC president and State Congress so as to connect on the ground as well as with the social media.
Agitations and strikes for promoting the party as a credible alternative are going to be the key to Jayadev’s performance. Each district must have at least one agitation programme per week with appropriate reporting to the PCC president while he could hold meetings in districts, covering as many districts as possible in a month. The poll preparedness for publicity and media also needs to be firmed up and is a massive challenge. It needs formation of a committee for preparing ground on publicity and media management as well as to start identifying issues which could form a part of the manifesto in six months from now. This can be further accentuated by having a research and development cell within the PCC which would prepare intellectual capital and documents for the benefit of the PCC president/ DCCs based on the issues that emerge from time to time so as to enable the right facts and figures to be accessible to the organisational cadre on their fingertips to take on the BJD.
With elections less than a year away, the identification of potential candidates and issues for the Congress for the elections needs to be firmed up. This could be done by undertaking candidate and pre-electoral surveys to identify appropriate candidates and issues. Apart from this, the challenges lie in identification of possibilities of factions and minimising the threat of electoral sabotage by keeping the high command in the communication loop and undertaking intelligence networking at various levels within the organisation.
Jayadev, accompanied by Jagdish Tytler, AICC general secretary in-charge, and Mirza Irshad Baig, AICC secretary in-charge and ClP leader Bhupinder Singh, met Rahul Gandhi in Delhi a couple of days back. It is reported that Rahul Gandhi has given blanket powers to Jayadev to effect changes and discipline people in the party with a single-minded strategy and bring back the Congress to power.
The challenges facing Jayadev are enormous. But the greatest challenge is the challenge of coming good on the expectations that the party high command has reposed on him. If he fails, it would strengthen the dissidents and factions opposed to him and his sustainability as the PCC chief would come under a shadow. If he wins, he could well be on his way to the Raj Bhavan post 2014 elections leading the State as a non-Patnaik CM which has been a rarity so far over the past three decades, notwithstanding the brief stints by Hemanand Biswal and Giridhar Gamang. Till such time, the ultimate survivor with strong instincts of rebounding back to form, Jayadev Jena, has a long road ahead with challenges, which though difficult are not insurmountable. Just as the Naveen-Pyari combination spelt success for the BJD, the Jayadev Jena-Srikant Jena combine might replicate it back for the Congress. Known as Jayadev’s mentor, Srikant is on the offensive in a bid to corner Naveen Patnaik. It is indeed interesting times for Odisha politics.
(Dr Sasmit Patra is a keen observer of the Odisha politics. He can be reached at sasmitpatra@gmail.com)