Sonia gave life to Congress, Rahul re-energising the party

Sonia Gandhi has formally designated her son Rahul to take on the future leadership of the Congress party. Rahul has been in active politics as member of the Lok Sabha from 2004, the Youth Congress and NSUI president from 2008 and member of the party's Election Coordination Committee from November 14, 2012. Rahul's real focus has been to strengthen and energise the party organisation as serious organisational weaknesses of the party had become apparent, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh et alwhere the party was repeatedly defeated in elections and a situation had emerged that the party did not have even a cadre of workers and locallevel leaders.

Sonia Gandhi herself had inherited a party that was in shambles and, beginning with her presidentship and Pachmarhi meeting of 1998, her agenda was to revitalise the organisational structure of the party that had been decaying very fast. With Sonia Gandhi's leadership, a dying Congress was brought to life and the party formed a coalition government at the Centre in 2004 and 2009. In spite of these electoral victories, the Congress party's basic weaknesses, especially at the organisational level, persisted. Rahul was made general secretary and, in the process of rebuilding the party machine, Rahul found it was an uphill task to revive the party's organisation.

Remember, Rahul's father, Rajiv, had also promised, in the Mumbai Centenary Session of the Congress in 1985, to 'cleanse' the party of 'power brokers and middlemen' who had come to occupy central positions in the party hierarchy. The 'old stalwarts' of the party, who were thoroughly entrenched in the power structure, played every trick of the trade to tarnish the image of 'clean Rajiv' who decisively lost the elections in 1989. It is one thing to lose the Lok Sabha elections, it is another thing to be outmanoeuvred by Machiavellis of one's own party. So, it would seem unlikely that Rahul would be able to match the machinations of the entrenched powerful leaders of his own party.

It is also Rahul's very partial, even flawed, understanding, like his father's, that if the party organisation is in proper shape and in tune with the ideology and ideas of the leadership, the party can face its electoral competitors. Party organisation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to function in a highly-competitive party system, because if this were the case, the CPI (M)-led coalition government would not have been defeated in West Bengal by a political maverick and a street fighter. The so-called 'youth' inducted by Rahul in the party are not new faces because ScindiaBSE -4.96 %, Deora, Jindal or Sachin Pilot et al are old wine in new bottles because they have filled posts vacated by their fathers.

A party organisation is a carrier of the ideology and programme to voters and it is assumed that party leaders and activists are themselves committed to the programme laid down by the party. It is not only that the Communist parties and the RSS/BJP have strong cadre-based party organisations, they also have committed ideologues who fully identify with the ideology of socialism or majority Hindutva fascism. So, the real task before Rahul is not only to strengthen the Congress party organisational structure from the grassroots level, but to create an organisation that itself is committed to the party ideology and programme.