It is becoming increasingly painful to listen to Congressmen and women harp on about how they are not empowered, how nothing can happen without ?family clearance?, how the political growth of young aspirants is stunted to make way for the ?heirs?. How the political limitations of those heirs have to be applauded for them to survive in the high echelons of power play that they do not want to give up. How freedom of speech and action is damned within all party forums. How they, the ?loyal? members and traditional leaders, are all being compelled to waste away their lives waiting for Godot!
This, coming from failed political personages, leaves one cold and hugely indifferent to their decline. The ?dialogue? we are inflicted with in this ongoing farce has reduced the Congress to a degraded and uninspiring collective of failed and self-serving politicians who are disconnected with the excitement of a fast-changing India. Caught in suspended animation, unable to swing into the fray and fight for their place in this great manthan, this vast churning that is happening around us, this party and its leaders are woefully out of whack.
The ?liberal? space will soon be grabbed by those who were, until recently, seen to be reactionary and intellectually bigoted, people who were deemed parochial and anti-minority and therefore unacceptable as rulers of a multicultural and plural society. Times have changed, and these ?parochial? politicians have seen the writing on the wall and realised that the delivery of goods and services to all is the critical mandate, and that if addressed properly and efficiently, it could transform this civilisation and the dynamism of its future by empowering the many as opposed to the few.
The baton may well have already passed from the erstwhile Congress to newer parties that appear to represent the aspirations of another generation, having consciously discarded the baggage of the 1940s and 1950s. These leaders have fire in their bellies. They want to lead from the front. They will move heaven and earth to do so as they religiously reinvent their stance and rhetoric. They are not afraid of admitting the earlier wrongs of their political careers.
There is a new politics in the air, one where admission of guilt gives a strong fillip to the individual leader who has the guts to speak out, accept misjudgement and fault and embrace constituents with an apology for past misdeeds. A sharing of the socio-political and economic agenda as well as a clear, well-articulated strategy to ensure things happen will go a long way in winning support. While 24-hour TV is rather dumbed down, it has managed to expose the realities of mal-governance and corruption in the administrative and political arena. It will take the very agile among public personas to survive the current churn. Congressmen and women who constantly whine and complain about their party and its high command should either step down and retire or cease the outside chatter and thrash out issues to initiate a fresh and energetic strategy to actively retrieve the space the party has lost over the last three decades.
Younger elected leaders need to assert themselves. They should take a lesson from the Barack Obama book of how to do it. They need to formulate, collectively, how they intend to bring dignity, efficient endeavour and action to their agenda for India in this new millennium. If this does not happen with commitment and passion, India?s grand old party will fade into oblivion and enter political science tomes as an example of how not to do it.
The level of intellectual input and vigorous debate needs to be elevated, deadweight of the Congress ?politburo? need to be dismissed with fanfare and gratitude, and inexperienced men and women need to chart the course for the next decade. Experience has come to mean status quo and that needs to be shunned. India craves a true metamorphosis.