On its return from what was supposed to be a historic plenary in Calcutta, the Congress looks tired and uncertain. In short, it looks no different from the party of a week ago. That the organisation has no intention of reforming itself is obvious from the fact that all its energies were expended in the tussle for seats on the Congress Working Committee. If party workers were hoping for new beginnings and a firm sense of direction, they will be bitterly disappointed. Fifty years on from Independence and on the threshold of the next century, the grand old party stares its own demise in the face and has no idea what to do about it. There was nothing at the plenary to suggest the Congress can recapture something of the spirit of 50 years ago when it bestrode the country like a colossus and encapsulated the dreams of millions. The rhetoric does go back in political and economic resolutions to the hoary principles of secularism and primacy for the downtrodden. But the chasm between words and action remains and the country has grown too cynical to be taken in by tired formulae and quasi-apologies. When Congress leaders reveal weak-mindedness about their economic prescriptions of yesterday, they remove the last shreds of the party's credibility. Even the appearance of unity eludes the party.

Over the last half century, the Congress has fallen from grace on innumerable occasions but it has also done much to be proud about. Its blackest day was the Emergency. But it also nurtured democracy and built institutions to underpin it. Despite several counter trends, its core vision of a pluralistic society has stood the country in good stead. Widespread poverty survives but large-scale famine and starvation have been averted. Its economic policies before the 1980s are now much reviled, often with good reason, but it cannot be forgotten that the country's unity and stability and its future potential are in part a function of the physical infrastructure and the middle-classes created by those policies. The Congress can also take credit for recognising, if belatedly, that a closed economy was no longer in the country's best interests and for showing the courage to strike out in new directions.

Indira Gandhi's legacy of centralising control in the party president was the single most destructive tendency in the Congress. It has never been able to return to democratic methods of functioning. As a consequence, it has lost its moorings among the people, its rank and file have become more and more irrelevant and its main business has became holding on to power at any cost, even if by proxy. Decay is inevitable. The Congress has shrunk into a shadow of its former self because it has come to represent no one but some power-hungry politicians. Pessimism is hard to avoid given the bankruptcy of ideas among the present leadership. Gandhiji had advised disbanding the party after Independence. It is ironic how the Congress has been following those words of wisdom inexorably decade after decade despite its will to survive.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.