The Congress’s impressive showing in Bihar has given the party a chance to make generational changes
The windfall for the Congress in the Bihar Assembly election, winning seven times its present strength in the House, has once again focussed attention on party vice president Rahul Gandhi’s elevation as the president. Even the Congress did not expect such a bonanza in a State where it had reached the bottom these past three decades. Its victory is its second best performance in Bihar since 1985.
While there is a saying that success has many fathers and failure has one mother, the Congress has credited the victory to the enterprise of its leader, Rajiv Gandhi. Senior Congress leader CP Joshi, in charge of party affairs in Bihar, has already declared that the feeling of Congress workers was that Mr Gandhi should take over the reins now. There are other senior leaders like AK Antony who have joined the chorus, and many more voices will emerge now that the Congress is looking up in the Hindi belt.
The sycophants are now claiming that while Mr Nitish Kumar may be the architect of the ‘grand alliance’ victory, it was Rajiv Gandhi who was the catalyst of the alliance. What they mean is that, while RJD supremo lalu Prasad was dilly-dallying and Mr Nitish Kumar had reached the end of his patience waiting for his nod, it was Mr Gandhi’s efforts to move towards Mr Nitish Kumar which more or less forced lalu Prasad to fall in line.
There is no doubt that the Congress’s supporters were waiting for an opportune time to anoint their leader as the party chief, and that time seems to have come now. The good showing in Bihar is the first in a long time, in fact, after the party won Karnataka in 2013. There is no point in waiting any longer as his apprenticeship has already had a long gestation period
First of all, the morale of the party workers is up after this creditable victory, although the Congress was the junior partner in the alliance. Even senior Congressmen had said privately that the 41 seats allotted to them in the alliance was much more than their proportionate strength in Bihar. The victory is all the more important because it has happened in a State where the party had lost primacy since 1990. Second, while there were questions about the dynasty, Bihar has proved that the Nehru-Gandhis are still a uniting factor.
The third is that the older generation, which had been stalling Mr Rahul Gandhi’s elevation so far, will have no further excuses now, as the Bihar victory is being credited to his strategy. Fourth, the domino effect will be felt in the next year’s elections to five States — West Bengal, Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The Congress is currently ruling in Karnataka and Assam. While the party had lost the Government for the past four decades in West Bengal, in Tamil Nadu it will be 50 years since it ruled the Secretariat.
Although the Congress has been piggy-back-riding with either the DMK or the AIADMK, neither had admitted the Congress as a coalition partner in the State Government.
However, one thing the party has to decide is: If it continues to go for a coalition in the States, it means that it has given up its hopes of primacy for now. The Bihar result has shown that a viable anti-BJP front, with the Congress as a catalyst, can defeat the BJP. But the Congress may not be the fulcrum of the victory. The party has to take a conscious decision here.
Moreover, the Bihar victory has showed that going it alone is not a viable option for the Congress any more. Mr Rahul Gandhi’s experiment on this had failed, and now the party has no other option but to go for a credible alliance with regional parties or perish. The Congress will have to admit that it is not a dominant force.
It is all very well to credit Mr Gandhi with the Bihar victory, but he has huge responsibilities if he takes over now. The first is to maintain the momentum created by this win until at least next year’s Assembly polls. For this, he needs to be more accessible to party workers. The second is to revitalise the party and build it at the grossroots level.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh hinted some time ago that Mr Rahul Gandhi was preparing to take over the party along with his team. His major task is to build the second line leaders in the party and also in the states which he has been talking about for long. If he fails to do that in the post-Bihar result, it will be one more missed opportunity for him and for the Congress. It could also be potentially damaging for the party’s prospects in the near future.