Time has come for working towards a well-defined strategy and getting the party back on the track to take on the BJP
Just when India's grand old party was trying to get its feet on the ground days after the captivating episode of some veteran stalwarts in the Congress shooting a letter to the party supremo Sonia Gandhi calling for changes in the party set-up, here comes another salvo. This time they number 9 and all are expelled members from the Uttar Pradesh Congress. Their call too is not very different from the one from the earlier 'Group of 23', asking Sonia to rise above the affinity for the family.
The developments of late in the party clearly indicate that the organisation's in the doldrums and it's time that the first family pulls down the perpetual dynastic rule over the party before it slips into extinction from the political map of the country. With Rahul Gandhi refusing to be politically mature and Sonia not keeping in good health, there may not be an appropriate occasion to hand over the baton to the young guns. Ignore Priyanka for she only bears the looks of Indira Gandhi and not her charisma.
Blame it on Rahul, the party has never been able to regain its lost glory since 2014. After the debacle in the Parliamentary elections, he erred by not showing the doors to the non-performing oldies and bringing younger faces to the fore. And to add to his failures are the frequent sabbaticals abroad when his presence was required the most in the country, and not to speak of his silly comments and statements during border tensions involving our country. At 50 plus, he's politically an undergrad.
Till there's no decentralisation of power, there will be no way out for the Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi built the Congress and the country with democratic values. But it is ironic that, for some time, the way in which the party is being run, there is confusion and depression among ordinary party workers," the UP Congress leaders have said in their letter.
The Congress ought to learn from its own experiment of devolution of powers: the states where it tinkered with the tenure of its Chief Ministers -- not allowing completion of five years tenure, and a few states where they were given a free hand. For eg Punjab and Assam -- absolute powers to the chief ministers there have yielded high returns. The Gandhis need to learn from the BJP if it has to survive the unprecedented downfall it's been in since the advent of Modi. The saffron party may have other fallouts but it hasn't deviated from extending devolution of authority to its arms in other states, and it helped deliver.
The sycophants of the Gandhis will never allow the energetic youngsters in the party to come in the limelight, it is here where the leadership will have to take a serious call in reshaping the party. Time has come for working towards a well-defined strategy and getting the party back on the track to take on the BJP which is riding high on its recent accomplishments, be it Ram Mandir or abrogation of Section 370.
