What makes Gandhis-CWC a team amid Congress ruins

The Gandhis flaunted at Saturday’s CWC meeting the ‘overwhelming’ and ‘passionate’ support they could command, just as they had rallied an ‘overwhelming attack’ on change seekers at the last year’s CWC meet after 23 of them (with just a handful of them in the CWC) wrote to Sonia Gandhi. How do the Gandhis make this ‘loyalty show’ work, even when the family’s and the party’s political fortunes have reached a nadir? The answer lies in an intricate, cleverly crafted, Congress leadership structure that works by bartering patronage for loyalty – a mutually benefiting arrangement.

The Congress folklore always insists the Gandhi family’s leadership of the party is a ‘strategic requirement’ for three reasons: that the Gandhis ‘alone’ are the party’s ‘mass leaders’, ‘deliver’ victories and governments (and thus offices to the Congress functionaries) and ‘keep the party united’.

However, each of these arguments have lost ground in the new realities of Indian politics. With the Gandhis leading the charge, Congress tumbled to 44 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and 52 in 2019 – the lowest tallies for Congress. Worse, the combined ‘mass appeal’ of the three Gandhis in the last two LS polls was far below what two “uncharismatic leaders” PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri-led Congress had raked in – 140 and 141 seats, respectively – when the Congress lost the 1996 and 1998 polls.

The fact that the Congress today heads just three state governments shows the limits of the Gandhi family in repulsing the BJP even in the assembly polls. Unending desertions – most of them sworn ‘Gandhi loyalists’ – have resulted in the collapse of a few Congress state regimes. Hence, Gandhis are no more the unifying factor in the party.

Yet, the family ‘rules’ the CWC – AICC, PCCs, DCCs and party delegates – by leveraging the ‘power of nominations’. Each CWC member is nominated by Congress president Sonia (earlier by Rahul), just as PCC/DCC chiefs/committees are, and PCC/AICC delegates are picked through loyalty monitoring via chains of nominated panels. Nominated members’ (including CWC’s) stints, continuation and removal is the sole discretion of the party chief. Even when elected, the Congress MLAs convey their preference for a to-be-CM at post-poll CLP meets by “authorising” the party chief to do the honours.

Leadership often makes a gallant show of ‘patronising’ and ‘promoting’ youngsters, Dalits, other socially backwards and even deadwood through ‘nominations’, but ensures none emerges as ‘elected members’, who can’t be removed/controlled by the Congress president. Then Congress chief Sitaram Kesri, despite scoring an overwhelming Congress presidential poll victory against heavyweight Sharad Pawar (and vocal Rajesh Pilot) through the nominated loyalty of PCC delegates, could not foil his overthrow within months by the CWC because “Chacha” had by then got saddled by the dare and weight of the ‘elected CWC members’ of the Kolkata session. Even docile ‘durbaris’ can bite once ‘elected’ to the CWC. After succeeding (CWC-sacked) Kesri as Congress chief, Sonia never took the risk of holding elections to the CWC, nor did Rahul. They opted for ‘choreographed’ authorisation by AICC sessions for the party president to ‘nominate’ the CWC members, including half the slots originally meant for ‘election’.

The “invitee categories” are meant to further shore up the president’s loyalists in the CWC. Sonia rejected the demand of change seekers to hold a meeting of “only” the regular CWC members. That would have meant 20 (after four vacancies), thus making it 17 loyalists against three change seekers – Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and ‘on and off’ Mukul Wasnik. With a few more lately showing a penchant for speaking up, the ‘risk’ of a compact gathering was avoided.

Instead, Gandhi again made it an “extended CWC” meeting with the reinforcement of nominated loyalists in the form of 36 invitees, thus making it a gathering of 56, or 53 Vs 3. Thus, the face-to-face offline mega meet played out as a carnival of loyalists’ mob, ready to ‘lynch’ any voice of dissent.

From that echo chamber, Sonia declared she was a “full-time, hands-on, Congress president” to the same CWC members who had made her “interim president” in 2019. It was the unquestioning guarantee of “we want Rahul” loyalists that emboldened Rahul to demand “ideological clarity” (sic) from them despite his record of having favoured ex-saffronites Sidhu, Patole, Sanjay Nirupam, Revanth Reddy to head PCCs. The mob comfort also inspired the ‘idealist’ in him to brag about the magnanimity “of making a Dalit” the CM and publicise how CM Channi, in return, “cried over phone” to him in gratitude.

But, there are no free lunches. CWC members/three CMs, who fiercely shielded the Gandhis, often had, and will have, their own wish list as return gifts. These include their rights to promote their own children and cronies, to stunt their turf rivals, to reject unacceptable demands to give up offices or accommodate in-house rivals, to cement their party posts or seek better slots as another round of organisational elections start with a careful collection of trustable PCC delegates to fan Rahul inheriting the post from his mother, or still go for status quo, depending on what suits them, in the pre-poll scene.