THERE is scarcely a political party in the democratic world which did not taste defeat at the polls. Most revived. India’s Congress party was defeated twice but managed to revive and wrest power at the national level.

If questions are now being asked whether this time it will be laid low for much longer if not for good, it is because over recent decades its top leaders reduced the party to a praetorian guard. But revival is not impossible — provided Congress president Sonia Gandhi puts the nation’s interest above her own.

The nation needs a strong opposition party with a credible claim to power. The Congress cannot acquire that credibility so long as Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul Gandhi is allowed to call the shots in the party. She made him vice president though his record in public life has been uninspiring.

In the 2014 elections to the Lok Sabha, the Congress got a mere 44 seats, an all-time low. Its share of votes was 20pc. One is reminded of 1967 when it was returned to power at the centre but with an ominous debacle in all the states in the north, Punjab, Haryana, UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha plus Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south.

In 1969, prime minister Indira Gandhi split the Congress, developed a new ideology summed up in the slogan ‘gharibi hatao’ and backed it by populist measures like nationalisation of banks, not to forget a determined bid for Muslim votes and those of the scheduled castes. She won a massive majority in the 1971 Lok Sabha polls.

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress and its government fell into the hands of the corrupt P.V. Narasimha Rao. Sonia Gandhi became a primary member of the Congress in 1997. A year later, she took over as Congress president.

Rahul Gandhi’s leadership is doing the party no good.

The BJP formed the government in 1998 and ruled till 2004. Had she not acquired control over the Congress in 1998, the BJP would not have been defeated in 2004. She strengthened the organisation, and provided an ideological cover, however nebulous. That personal control over the party and interference in the government, headed by her respected nominee Manmohan Singh, proved to be her undoing. The record in the first term was creditable; in the second, disastrous.

Both Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi refused to hold elections in the party; ensured that no regional leader could acquire pre-eminence enough; diluted the Congress’ ideology of old-secularism, concern for the poor and espousal of the rights of the deprived.

After the last Lok Sabha polls, adversity exposed the cracks which power had concealed. Dissidence and resignations followed in as many as 10 states especially after the debacle in Assam and Kerala where it lost power. Arunachal Pradesh fell victim to infighting, Meghalaya bids fair to follow suit thanks to the Congress Chief Minister Mukul Sangma’s nepotism.

A political party rests on four props — policy and programme; leadership; organisational set-up; and party activists. The year 1945 provides good lessons. The Conservative Party lost to Labour by a massive vote. The war hero Winston Churchill went into depression. One man kept his head. He was R.A. Butler. He knew that the voter had found Labour’s programme attractive and considered the Conservative Party a relic of the past. He simply asked for a room in the party headquarters where he crafted a programme which could win popular support. In doing so, he stole some of Labour’s clothes.

The Conservatives rode back to power in 1951. The party organisation was intact; its leader Churchill remained popular. Only the party shed its shabby worn-out clothes that made it unattractive to the electorate.

Congress activists are demoralised. But that can be overcome provided that they see genuine reforms in the other three supports. The organisational structure has developed cracks from years of neglect. The ideology has virtually evaporated.

No one knows what the Congress really stands for today. Sonia Gandhi does not give battle to the BJP on secularism for fear of losing the Hindu vote. Nor has she invited party men like Jairam Ramesh and sympathisers outside to help in developing a policy and programme in a country as diverse as India.

What is being talked about is a margdarshak mandal (elders’ council) to put veterans on the shelf. Rahul Gandhi mulls an advisory council comprising the ‘young’ whom he can trust to follow him. It will “come up with new public policies to be spearheaded by the Congress”.

But at considerable expense Rahul Gandhi set up a secretariat-cum-brains trust of his own which worked for well over a decade; all harness, no horse. That is the central flaw — no revival of the Congress is possible so long as the uninspiring Rahul Gandhi calls the shots in the party.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2016