Rahul Shivshankar

The trouble with the Congress campaign in Uttar Pradesh party, President Sonia Gandhi has let it be known,was not the lack of leadership but the presence of ‘too many leaders’. In the welter of post-poll inanities proffered by Congress spin doctors this one by Sonia Gandhi stands out – It isn’t inane. Quite the opposite. In Ms Gandhi’s clear-eyed assessment are none of the logical infirmities or inconsistencies that are the hallmark of instant political autopsies.

Sonia Gandhi’s assessment draws its legitimacy from the acknowledgement of an existential reality of the Congress organization that has reduced it in the last four decades to a national party with a regional mindset.  The shift from inclusiveness – or internal democracy – to a plebiscitary culture revolving around one personality that began in the late 60s is now complete. So much so that the Congress President feels not in the slightest out of place in terming the presence of ‘too many leaders’ a lamentable burden. A ‘bother’ that might in fact have cost her son the glory of staging the  Congress’ great resurrection drama in his beloved theater of Uttar Pradesh.

That Sonia Gandhi and her fawning courtiers consider legitimacy and not entitlement as the real villain has worrying implications for the party. It suggests that the party is horribly confused or unconvinced about reforms needed to cultivate a new leadership in touch with grassroot aspirations or build mechanisms to channel genuine feedback that allows strategists to draw lessons from debacles.

If Rahul is genuine about ‘taking responsibility’ and ‘improving the political system’ then he must first  convince his mother to look beyond him. Preferably in the direction of the nameless, faceless grassroot workers who go unheard behind the fugue of sycophancy that deafens the leadership to the cry for change sweeping through the country. In the final analysis only a Congress, of not one, but many Rahuls can pullback from the edge of the proverbial political precipice.