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The Earning Curve: What Congress leader Ramesh Kumar's '3-4 generations' statement reveals

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By Sidharth Mishra

Recently in a social media post Pawan Khera, the leading spokesperson of the Congress, claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s understanding of his party was based on the basis of people who left Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As if to qualify what Khera said, though inadvertently, a senior leader from Karnataka added, “We have made enough for three to four generations in the name of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. And if we do not protest in this situation, there will be worms in our food.”

A former Karnataka Assembly speaker K R Ramesh Kumar triggered a controversy with his remarks that the Congressmen should be indebted to Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi for making fortunes in their names in the course of their individual political careers. What he suggested, which cannot be said to be completely untrue, points towards ‘spoils system’ in the functioning of the Congress party.

According to various definition, in politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a merit system, where people are awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity.

While this relates largely to the government bureaucracy but its extension to members of the political party is best reflected in what Ramesh said. This is not to suggest that other parties do not practise this, they do in large numbers specially the regional outfits, but it has gripped the Congress like a cancer over the past few decades and remained the only political reason for its workers to continue association with the party.

No wonder in this hour of crisis, with the chances of the party being back in power looking remote, the workers are trudging to elsewhere to seek the spoils. Not surprised that the Jyotiraditya Scindhias and Jitin Prasadas decided to desert the Congress for greener pastuers.

While the Congress would apportion the blame on the BJP for weaning away its leaders but it would also have to look inwards and realise that in the absence of political programmes, even those who have not ‘benefitted for two or three generations’ are now leaving the party.

While a Pawan Khera or the Indian Youth Congress leader BV Sriniwas may have risen through the ranks but not to forget that their current position is also attributable to the vacancies created by the fortune seekers of the spoils system who have travelled elsewhere. The point can be more succinctly put by comparing the two pariwars – the Congress pariwar and the Sang pariwar.

While the former has proved to be a loose structure largely made up of the blocks of the families who have been with the party for two, three or four generations. While the Sangh pariwar consists of a number outfits working towards a common ideological goal.

Thus the Congress is faced with a situation, which ironically party president Sonia Gandhi herself spoke about a quarter of a century ago. In 1998, soon after Sonia Gandhi was anointed as party president, a Chintan Shivir (introspection conclave) was organised at Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh.

The flavour of the Pachmarhi session was captured in Sonia Gandhi’s inaugural address, which mentioned, “Electoral reverses are inevitable and are, in themselves, not cause for worry. But what is disturbing is the loss of our social base, of the social coalition that supports us and looks up to us.” Why aren’t people looking up to the Congress party?

Pachmarhi was clear that the party cannot survive for long on the charisma of its leaders alone and that it needed to strengthen the organisation at every level. However, the resolve of Panchmarhi was not carried forward. The Congress decided to take refuge in the spoils system during the next decade and half when it was in power at the Centre and in several states.

It ran alliance governments at the Centre and also in the states with sole purpose of being in power and not for any ideological advocacy. This enmeshed the governments in a plethora of corruption cases with in several instances involved the alliance partners but the alliance leader failed to take corrective measures.

The vote against the Congress in 2014 Lok Sabha polls was against corruption. No wonder the BJP-led government has periodically opened these cases to have them on the back foot and the ruling party cannot be faulted for it either. On the other hand despite being in power for eight years now, the Opposition was still to bring a case of corruption against the Narendra Modi government. 

With the loss of power to distribute the spoils in the past eight years, the Congress leadership would by now must have realised how weak the party has become. In the past two Lok Sabha elections, it’s not moved beyond remaining a double digit party, in many state assemblies it has been reduced to single-digit or no digit party.

The learning curve for the Congress leadership should be that the ‘Earning Curve’ was no more working in the absence of its ability to distribute spoils. They must realise that the very definition of politics was being reinterpreted by an adversary who was outmanoeuvring them on every step.

(First Published in FirstPost)

 

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