[Assam] The Imminent Collapse of Congress : MV Kamath

[Pradip Kumar Datta]

The Imminent Collapse of Congress : MV Kamath 



MV Kamath 

http://bigindians.blogspot.com/2008/07/imminent-collapse-of-congress-mv-kamath.html
 
Where there is no vision, says the Bible, the people perish. So, one might add, do parties. Would that be true of the Indian National Congress, that hoary organization over 120 years old that had seen the best of times and is now seen to be in terminal decline? For a good three quarters of a century it represented the voice of India, its undying hopes and suppressed fears. It was led by giants among men, and their name is legion. They were the ones who fought for freedom, made unbelievable sacrifices, courted imprisonment and death, because they had a vision of a free and magnificent India, an India of their dreams. Today it is a dream which lies shattered. The old leaders are all gone, the old familiar faces. In their place we have a bunch of nonentities, safely ensconced in their stately homes, rarely meeting fellow citizens to understand their problems, power-mad and money-hungry. The concept of sacrifice is foreign to their thinking. What can one
 possibly expect from this bunch? The party depends not on one vision, but on one dynasty which had pastly done its work and should have been thereafter relegated to deserved oblivion a long while ago. Yet it subsists, but barely. Gandhi, the Mahatma, once the fountainhead of wisdom, had realized as independence was approaching, that the time had come to disband the Congress which he had laboriously led for a quarter of a century and let various conflicting forces realign themselves. His advice was not taken. Sardar Vallabbhai Patel passed away on December 14, 1950. JB Kripalani, for long general secretary of the party, drifted away. So did C Rajagopalachari, unable to subscribe to Nehru’s economic theories. In the end, the Congress became the baby of the Nehru family. In the early years of independence, the glow of yesteryears persisted and sustained the party. By the time Nehru was approaching his end, doubts were being raised as to who would succeed
 him. There were no great stalwarts to take on the job and none had been groomed. In the end, as a result of the untimely end of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the party decided that safety lay in dynasticism. And the country has been paying for its folly. If the party draws any sympathy today, it is not because it has anything to offer, but because it has become the opium of a minuscule lot of leaderless people. They vote for the Congress out of habit and not out of conviction. Everyone knows that secularism, so-called, which the party craftily offers has long lost its meaning and significance. In many parts of the country, Muslims, whose support was sought, are drifting away from the Congress. So are the Dalits who have found in the corrupt but wily Mayavati a new messiah. Upper caste Hindus, who have for years been feeling betrayed by the Congress, have thrown their support to the BJP which is at least true to its convictions and faithful to the nation’s
 glorious past. Congressmen, having lost their moorings, have begun to drift. That has been noticeable in several States and in recent elections, most notably in Gujarat and Karnataka. Where does one go from here? There is no danger of India breaking up, but in State after State, the ‘‘we versus they’’ attitude is becoming painfully noticeable. The Congress along with the NCP (which is a one-man show) is in power but it has not been able to put the dangerously divisive Shiv Sena and its cousin Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in their place, which is the dustbin of history. It is almost as if the Congress is hand-in-glove with divisive elements in the State. In the last four years, the Congress has shamelessly been dependent at the Centre on a vagrant party, the CPI(M), which has been blackmailing its senior partner all down the line, to the utter confusion of the country. No one really knows where the UPA stands in the matter of the 123 Agreement and
 the Indo-US nuclear treaty. The Gujjar community in Rajasthan runs riot for over a fortnight, indulges in thoughtless violence, stops railways and road traffic leading to the cumulative loss in trade of crores of rupees, but Delhi prefers to see the BJP government in Jaipur embarrassed, when it should look at the entire tribal demand for inclusion in the ST category in a holistic way, and send in the Army to curb tribal arrogance. The party turns its face away from dangerous signs of meaningless regionalism. The DMK in Tamil Nadu has no one to question it when it pushes ahead with the Sethusamudram Project despite strong nationwide outrage. Chief Minister Karunanidhi insults Sri Ram by calling him a drunkard but no notice is taken of such lunacies. An editor of a very popular Marathi daily in Maharashtra has his house vandalized because he has the temerity to ask whether it was necessary for the Congress-led government to spend crores of rupees to set
 up a 309-feet statue of Chhatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj in the sea off Mumbai, when hundreds of Maharashtrian farmers are committing suicide because they cannot pay their debts. There is no word of condemnation from Sonia Gandhi. The DMK announces ministerial resignations from the UPA government and even names substitute appointments, without the Prime Minister being aware of what is going on within his cabinet. The PMK resorted to a hostile takeover of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences forcing the head to go to the Supreme Court for redress, which he gets. That is egg on the UPA government’s face, but it continues as if nothing has happened. Are we having a government in New Delhi? It is as if there is no government and the country is merely waiting passively for the next general elections to put a resurgent BJP back into power. The Congress accepts every slap on its face as if that is due and acceptable award for being senile. The blatant
 case of favouritism in which the Union Shipping and Surface Transport Minister T Baalu indulged in, goes unpunished. It is as if not crime, not blatant arrogance on the part of coalition partners, not even failures in the three Lok Sabha by-elections in Thane (Maharashtra), Tura (Meghalaya) and Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh) matter any longer. The grave has been dug for the Congress. It is apparently only a matter of time before it is formally laid in it for eternity. That is a sad end for a political party which at one time gave us gems of purest rays serene. The only consolation is that a freshly revitalized Bharatiya Janata Party is around with a sense of mission and the right leaders to work towards its fulfilment. India that is Bharat will never die. But the Congress will. In its demise that so many are so determinedly predicting, there is perhaps hope that a new party such as the one Gandhi had in mind will rise from its ashes. What we are witnessing
 is darkness before dawn. Luckily the waiting period is not going to be too long. The general elections should be held in November; prolongation by even a month will damage the Congress more than it thinks, with inflation rising menacingly week after week. That is a sign of things to come. source: sentinel assam
 
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