Tharoor & internal democracy

Shashi Tharoor was doing well at the UN. But, I suppose, he felt was getting into a rut. So he ran for the top job there though there was little chance he would get it. Manmohan Singh did support his candidature in his lacklusture manner and later inducted him into Parliament and the Foreign Affairs Ministry where he could do little. But Tharoor turned out to be a good MP. He has been re-elected 3 times and will probably continue to be elected even if he quits Congress. Perhaps, by pitching for the top job there, he is readying himself for quitting an organization now considered more shitty then even the UN. Sadly, this is unlikely to change. This is because even if they dynasty departs it will remain, in Tharoor's words, 'the foundational pillar of the Congress... its moral conscience, and ultimate guiding spirit'. Is that an overly harsh judgment? Perhaps. People like Gehlot and Kharge entered a party which did actually permit poor people of humble background from small towns to rise up under the banner of a Socialism which actively humiliated the wealthy and well-born. That phase did not last but by then loyalists were part of the power-elite. This was, if not Social Justice, then, Justice of a sort all the more satisfying for being personal and apprehensible as a reward for some exceptional trait that the children could inherit. This was karma as involving a heritable charisma flowing from the Mahatma and the Prime Minister he anointed.  Sadly, that charisma has depleted and Congress has lost its raison d'etre. That does not mean it can't survive as its own revenant. Perhaps, Shashi Tharoor will be the Steven King type chronicler of its final phase. But first, the scales must fall from his own eyes. The period mansion on which he has just put in a bid, still looks like a 'fix-me-upper' to him. He will soon see it was built on an ancient Indian burying ground. 

For the moment, he writes in Project Syndicate-  

The 137-year-old Congress has a storied history,

but the party Tharoor belongs to was created by Indira Gandhi in 1978. It has been controlled by Indira and her heirs since then though there was a period when Narasimha Rao as P.M and Congress President had poor relations with Sonia. Interestingly, Rao tried to strengthen his hand by holding internal elections in 1992. Nothing similar had happened since 1972. But Rao was unhappy with the result and gave some lame excuse to have a nominated Working Committee. Elections within a party can increase legitimacy and may permit merit to rise. But this has not been case in Tharoor's party. Rahul was supposed to organize elections for the Youth Congress in 2008. Nothing came of it.  

but it finds itself at a crossroads following several successive election defeats at the national and state level. True, the party has bounced back from similar setbacks, such as the electoral routs of 1977, 1989, and 1996. The tragic assassinations of leaders Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 were immediately followed by general-election victories.

Sadly, Rahul didn't take the hint to just get blown up already. 

But the 2019 general-election loss and Rahul Gandhi’s subsequent resignation as party president have resulted in a three-year-long leadership crisis.

Ten year long leadership crisis. Manmohan was not allowed to lead and nobody else would step forward. 

How can Congress overcome its current challenges? In addition to electing a new president, it should hold elections for the Congress Working Committee, the party’s principal executive body.

Would Tharoor really do so if he becomes President (not that he will)? Why offer a hostage to fortune? To be effective he needs to handpick his own team. The same is true of Kharge.  

Allowing the party’s rank-and-file members to choose who will lead this powerful body would help legitimize the party’s incoming leaders, giving them a clear mandate for much-needed renewal.

Surely, the only mandate needed is the knowledge that Congress is being wiped out? Either the new president picks his own team and turns around the Party's fortunes or else there will be no Party- just an unelectable, senile, rump.  

A new leadership would also galvanize voters. After UK Conservative Party members picked Boris Johnson to succeed Theresa May as party leader and prime minister in 2019, for example, the Tories won their biggest parliamentary majority since 1987.

Against Jeremy Corbyn whom Labor Party members were stupid enough to vote for twice. The man shouldn't have let Boris have a general election. But Boris soon imploded as, it now appears, has Truss. Leadership elections have been a blight for both Tories and Labor. There must be a better way to manage these things. I suppose we are now stuck with lame duck Truss because the Tory party seems to have a bottomless supply of potential leaders who are each worse than the last.  

Whatever the outcome of the current contest for Congress leadership, I believe it can revive the party and contribute to the defense of Indian democracy.

What if Kharge romps home and then loses Gujarat and then loses his own home state of Karnataka? The man was only nominated for Congress President because he failed to rope in Gehlot. Rewarding failure is not exactly a recipe for success at the polls.  

While the party’s presidential election is an internal exercise, it also offers Congress a chance to energize its political base and generate wider public interest.

But that hasn't happened. We have coverage of Rahul walking and even of Rahul talking. We have no coverage of Presidential debates because there were none. Tharoor had issued the challenge but then dropped it because the thing would be a fiasco. Kharge is 80 years old. He has risen from poverty.  Tharoor would come off looking elitist.

The Gandhi family’s decision to step aside is the key to this potential renewal.

In which case, their stepping back in will cancel any hope of 'renewal'. Yet what is the alternative? Either the party belongs to somebody or it belongs to nobody.  

Two candidates putting forward their visions for the party and the nation, and submitting themselves to a democratic vote, ends talk of “dynasty politics.”

Not even if the dynasty owns the party. A family owned company can pick two candidates for the job of CEO. Other shareholders and stakeholders may be invited to sit in as they debate with each other and describe their vision for the company's future. The family, as majority shareholder, decides between them. This same model can work in politics. People understand that the proprietor doesn't want the hassle of running the enterprise. Let some smart chap with an MBA do it. What is important is that the profits keep rolling into the family's coffers.  

Moreover, it highlights the fact that no other Indian political party has a comparable process to determine its future leadership.

There must be a good reason for this. The fact is that Congress was torn apart, within a couple of decades of its foundation, by a schism between the 'garam dal' and the 'naram dal'. Much of Mahatma Gandhi's power sprang from the manner in which he 'managed' internal democracy such that no such thing could actually flourish. But Nehru and Shastri and Kamaraj were no different in their approach.       

By adhering to its constitution, Congress may inspire other political parties to step into the sunlight of internal democracy.

Not if Congress implodes and disappears.  

But for Congress to return to power, the party’s new elected leader will have to find a way to increase the party’s appeal beyond its die-hard supporters. The party received only 19% of the vote in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, losing voters to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. To win them back, Congress requires youthful energy and fresh ideas that can challenge the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist ideology.

Modi didn't win because of his ideology. Nobody does- not the Communists in Kerala, not Kejriwal in Punjab, not Mamta in Bengal. It may be that the BJP has more RSS trained booth workers. But, if so, it is not their ideology that needs to be challenged, but their skills and organizational practices which need to be emulated.  

This requires a party leader who understands the aspirations of young Indians

the aspirations of young Indians are the same as the aspirations of young Nigerians or young Norwegians. Leaders need to actually lead, not spend all their time understanding that young peeps want to have happy life.  

and firmly believes that Congress can put the country on a better path.

So, Congress needs a delusional nutter to lead it.  

To help India seize the opportunities the twenty-first century offers,

as opposed to those less inviting opportunities the nineteenth century offers 

Congress must articulate a positive and aspirational vision for the country’s future.

Anyone can articulate any old shite. Politics aint about elocution. 

But first, it must fix the organizational and structural deficiencies that have impeded the party’s recent election campaigns.

i.e. tell Rahul to fuck off. But Congress may immediately collapse. Perhaps Varun will come to the rescue. The advantage with being dynastic is that there is an 'uncorrelated asymmetry' with respect to who calls the shots. This reduces endless 'rent contestation'.  

Its next president must combine effective leadership with organizational reforms.

No. Effective leadership is what puts you over the top. Organization can be done on the fly.  If Kejriwal won Punjab it wasn't because he had a superior grass-roots organization. 

Delegating powers to state leaders, for example, would free the new Congress leader from onerous administrative tasks and help create the strong local leadership that in previous decades undergirded the party’s national appeal.

What's to stop the 'strong local leader' doing a side-deal with the opposition? Also, how do you get your Rajya Sabha members elected? Consider current rumors of a rebellion by Gehlot. Why should he not get in bed with Adani and later get Corporate honchos elected to the Rajya Sabha rather than senile party hacks who have served the dynasty well?  

None of this will be easy.

None of it is worth doing. If it were, an easy way to do it would already have been found.  

But throughout its history, Congress has shown an immense capacity to weather changes and adapt to shifting political circumstances.

No it hasn't. It has merely shown that when someone with the surname 'Gandhi' gets shot or blown-up then the Party can cash in on a sympathy vote. 

The people of India are tired of the BJP’s domineering and increasingly divisive governance style.

 But Congress is never tired of repeating this type of nonsense. Why not say 'landless laborers in rain deficit areas are increasingly angry at the Government's failure to produce accurate Leontief input-output matrices for the purposes of Econometric research'? 

To unite the country and reinvent itself, Congress must use the national unity march and the upcoming presidential election to position itself as a clear ideological alternative.

This means shouting 'RSS is EVIL! Hindutva is EVIL! Boo to Fascism!' The problem here is that this is not an ideology- it is imbecility. Congress can't point to anyone and say 'that's your alternative to Modi. He will do a better job. Vote for us and we will make him PM'.  

India deserves no less.

India definitely deserves a choice of PM candidates. Congress was supposed to field Rahul but he was gun-shy at first and then turned out to be useless. Priyanka was supposed to be Congress's Plan B. But she turned out to be even more useless. What happened to Sidhu, whom Priyanka liked? He is in jail. Where is Channi? In Canada. He didn't even show up for the Sangrur by-election. Apparently, Channi had inducted Moosewalla into the Party. But being known as Rahul's choice for CM is enough reason to hide your head among the moose of Canada.