High command curse

Puducherry, a tiny former French colony now a Union Territory, is better known for its pleasant seafront and the famous Aurobindo Ashram than for its politics. With a population of just 1.2 million and one elected member of Parliament, it does not count for much in national politics, which is perhaps why it did not receive much attention

from national television channels on May 13 when results of this year’s first major state and Union Territory elections were announced. Yet, Puducherry too went to the polls and what happened there holds a lesson for the rest of the country.
The stars of the polls might have been West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Tamil Nadu’s J. Jayalalithaa and Assam’s Tarun Gogoi, but in Puducherry the hero was former chief minister and Congress rebel, N. Rangasamy, whose recently floated party, the All-India N.R. Congress (AINRC), in alliance with the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), routed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Congress alliance by winning 20 (15 AINRC and five AIADMK) of the union territory’s 30 Assembly seats. This ended 12 years of Congress rule in the coastal enclaves that constitute this union territory.
Mr Rangasamy, an unpretentious, simple living politician and avowed disciple of the late Tamil stalwart Kumaraswami Kamaraj, is a popular figure who had ruled the Union Territory from 2001 to 2008, leading the Congress to two successive electoral wins. Even as chief minister, he had remained accessible and was often seen riding his motorcycle in his constituency to meet colleagues and supporters. In August 2008, he was asked to resign by the party high command, ostensibly due to complaints from rivals, who accused him of paying far too much attention to his own constituency. He was replaced with the more patrician V. Vaithilingam, who had served as chief minister during 1991-96.
The relegation of a popular leader to the sidelines is not a new page in Congress culture; over the years this style of functioning has emaciated the party’s local leadership throughout the country; and state level leaders, reduced to utter subservience, have often revolted or left the party. This was the case with Mr Rangasamy, who decided to float his own party on February 7, 2011, and went on to decimate his former party three months later.

Like it or not, the political pendulum in this country has been swinging away from the Centre to the states. This has led to the era of coalition politics, underscoring the critical importance of state level leaders. No political party today can hope to make its presence felt at the state level without a robust leadership and popular leaders.
One of the reasons why the Congress has not been able to make much of an impression in Tamil Nadu, for instance, is because it does not have a mass leader in that state. Its local leaders are either irrelevant or discredited. The main Tamil politicians, like Ms Jayalalithaa, Mr M. Karunanidhi and now Mr Vijayakanth, tower above the rest. The Congress has not been able to attract any person of great stature in Tamil Nadu because of its culture. Most mass leaders, who tend to be hugely egotistical for a reason, cannot imagine functioning under the dictates of some high command in New Delhi and therefore avoid joining the Congress.
This elections’ giant killer, Ms Banerjee, leader of the Trinamul Congress, was a Congress party member not so long ago. She had made her mark as a Congress leader in the 1984 general elections by defeating the Communist heavyweight Somnath Chatterjee. Since then, barring the 1989 polls, she has won every single Lok Sabha elections she has contested. That she was an emerging leader of exceptional ability was acknowledged as early as 1991, when she got her first portfolio as a minister of state in the union government. Yet, by December 1997 she had thrown in the towel and formed her own party, voicing disillusionment with the Congress leadership, which seemed reluctant to fight the Left in Bengal.
In all these years nobody in the Congress considered bringing her back or crowning her queen of the Bengal Congress. Today, with a massive mandate (183 out of 294 seats), she is the state’s most powerful leader. On victory day, she made it a point to tell the media that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had called her from Kabul to congratulate her and Soniaji too had called. She has pulled the Bengal Congress along to a victory of sorts as well, helping it secure more seats than the Communist Party of India(Marxist). But the Congress can say goodbye to a comeback in West Bengal as long as she is around.
In Assam, the Congress leadership had to acknowledge that its astonishing victory was due to the good and clean governance provided by chief minister Tarun Gogoi. The party had succeeded beyond expectation because it had allowed an effective state leader to function without hindrance and had backed him with developmental funds from the Centre.
In Kerala, it could be argued that the Congress was prevented from getting a convincing victory because of an effective state leader in the form of V. Achuthanandan.
One of the reasons why the Congress has been forced to accept coalition politics is its failure to nurture state-level leaders or countenance politicians of independent status. This has been the Congress’ problem since the days of Indira Gandhi. Earlier, the Congress was an umbrella organisation that welcomed all opinion into its fold and gave weightage to local leaders. The demise of that culture has come to haunt the Congress today.

Indranil Banerjie is an independent security and political risk consultant