The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : A party's need for renewal and three optionsBut a few days later party president Sonia Gandhi and her son and heir
apparent Rahul Gandhi were both reported to have attributed the
disappointing result to "organisational weaknesses." Rather obvious.
Khare blames it on "organisational weakness" and absolves the Dynasty. Khare is one helluva boot-licker.
The question is how does a 122-year-old organisation re-design itself?
Wrong. The question is why re-design a party which is well past its expiry date? I am not kidding. You can hear it from Khare himself. I have listed the Khare-isms below. The inferences are fairly obvious.
1. The Congress, despite all its democratic trappings, has become a closed
shop, with an unfair and undeserved advantage accruing to the
practitioners and beneficiaries of the status quo.
2. That promising initiative was killed slowly by the status quoist party
managers in collusion with the state leaders. Perhaps the prospect of a
truly open and genuine electoral process was too disquieting for
everyone at the top of the Congress hierarchy. i.e. Congress does not have open and genuine electoral process.
3. If a party does not keep itself consciously open to the new voices and
new forces, it courts stagnation and dysfunctionality. Somehow the
Congress has managed to achieve precisely this.
4.
The Congress' signature tune has been its history and its claim to inclusiveness. However, the claim now holds only on paper;
5. But in practice the party has increasingly cultivated a massive internal organisational dishonesty
6. in district after district the Congress is presumed to have enrolled
many times more members than the votes it gets in an Assembly election. i.e. It is possible that the Congress members themselves don't vote for the party.
7. Congress has cultivated bogusness.
This cultivated bogusness suits everyone. Subversion begins at the AICC
level, and the name of the game becomes the manipulation of the roster
of Pradesh Returning Officer (PRO). And since everybody knows — from
the very top to the block level — that the electoral process had become
an elaborate charade, no leader is able to command genuine respect,
either of the party workers or of the average voter.
8. Even if it does not help the country, the dynasty must rule India, says Khare. Notwithstanding the disapproval of the proponents of middle
class-centric political correctness, the family option is not a totally
unhelpful strategy.
9. the Congress is no longer the omnipotent political force in the country
10. These other players have come to enjoy their autonomy and see no reason to pay any homage to a declining dynasty.
11. Ms. Gandhi has to overcome her present preference for compromise and
accommodation with the old, tired, and defeated "senior leaders" who
dominate the Cabinet and the Congress Working Committee.
12. It is time to bring about a different organisational culture, based on
capacity and performance instead of an excessive reliance on age,
seniority, and past services.
13.
A geriatric overload is definitely hampering the party's electoral footwork.
14. It also prevents the party from rediscovering the usefulness of the accountability principle.
15. Nor does it allow an effective taming of egos and overweening
ambitions, invariably pursued at the expense of collective goals and
objective.
16. Sadly, the present Congress lacks even this minimum degree of ideological and personal coherence.
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