Is Congress making Rahul irrelevant?-7 Dec, 2010,

7 Dec, 2010, 07.08AM IST, Raghu Krishnan,

Is Congress making Rahul irrelevant?


When the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scams started hitting the headlines in September, the Indian Olympic Association president and Congress MP from Pune Suresh Kalmadi said he would resign as chairman of the CWG Organising Committee if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or the All India Congress Committee (AICC) president Sonia Gandhi asked him to do so.

In the wake of the subsequent scam in Mumbai's Adarsh Housing Society (where flats in an apartment-block developed to accommodate Kargil War widows were allotted to generals, bureaucrats and the kith and kin of Maharashtra Congress CMs), Mrs Gandhi's first reaction of asking two senior Union ministers to prepare a report appeared to indicate that this was an inner-party crisis and not a criminal conspiracy warranting arrest and interrogation of all those involved!

Not a single politician has been arrested or interrogated so far though Congress spokespersons routinely claim that everything will be “thoroughly investigated” !

The one person missing in all this is AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi. At the time when the scams hit the headlines, Rahul had been campaigning in Bihar.

Over the last few years, Rahul has been visiting each state in an attempt to revitalise the party by strengthening its youth and student wings through a mass-membership drive. So much so that the Congress success in winning 21 Lok Sabha seats in India's most populous state of UP in the 2009 polls was attributed to Rahul's drive to strengthen the party.

The ripple effect of all this was being felt even in Tamil Nadu. It was even assumed that if the Congress broke free of its dependence on the DMK, the UPA government would take stringent action on the . 1,76,000-crore 2G telecom scam (as estimated by the CAG).

However, the problem with corruption is that it doesn't quite stay still at manageable levels! Even while Rahul has been trying to strengthen the party at the grassroots, the tsunami wave of corruption is threatening to engulf not just the alliance partners but also the Congress.

Almost as if to underline the point that corruption under the Congressled coalition government in Maharashtra is not confined to one Adarsh sea-facing building in one corner of Mumbai, there are reports of 442 acres of mining leases in the Yavatmal district being given to the son of the president of the state unit of the Congress and the scion of a ruling party MLA.

Which is in sharp contrast to Rahul's stand on supporting tribals in the BJD-ruled state of Orissa in their campaign against the allotment of forest land for mining. That Maharashtra's eco-sensitive Yavatmal district has a high incidence of farmer-suicides only makes the contrast that much more painful.

Merely saying the BJP did worse is not a valid argument since the electorate voted for the UPA in the hope that its lot would be improved as per the slogan that ‘Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath’ . In 1887, two years after the Congress came into existence , Baron Acton famously observed, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Power also tends to make its wielders arrogant, and absolute power makes them absolutely arrogant.

On the Times Now news-hour debate on November 1, 2010, when RTI (right-to-information ) activist Arvind Kejriwal was criticising the UPA government's failure to effectively investigate the 2G and other scams, Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan interrupted with the comment that “tell the RTI activist that it was our government which gave him the power to be an RTI activist by passing the RTI Act” ! The spokesperson had apparently forgotten that, in a democracy, all political parties derive their power from the people!

However, political parties also tend to forget that the process of debate and discussion can be mutually beneficial. Despite the Congress' poor performance in the recent Bihar polls, the JD(U)-BJP alliance could learn from Rahul's focus on the need to actively involve youth in the electoral process in a country where two-thirds of the population is below 35.

Likewise, the Congress could learn from Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's repartee that those who criticise state governments should learn governance at the state-level before they aspire to be PMs so as to get an insight into how a country is actually run. Right now, it's not the opposition but the Congress which could make Rahul irrelevant!

The Supreme Court's observations on the CBI's prolonged delay in proceeding against DMK telecom minister Raja (who resigned on November 14 only after being indicted by the CAG) have underlined the crying need for immediate and stringent action to tackle corruption and restore the rule of law.

One obvious solution would be to not persist with a system where there are two centres of power but to follow the established parliamentary democracy convention of the leader of the ruling party functioning as the head of the government and being fully accountable.

While Rahul has been trying to build the party, the tsunami wave of corruption is threatening to engulf not just the alliance partners but also the Congress. Merely saying the BJP did worse is not valid since the electorate voted for UPA in the hope that lot would be improved. There is a crying need for immediate action to tackle corruption.