IS UP GOING THE CONGRESS WAY?

Amar Singh, Mulayam Yadav's Man Friday, has all but quit the Samajwadi Party (SP). Although he says it is for health reasons, no one is in any doubt that this development has its roots in the poor performance of the party in the last Lok Sabha elections, primarily because it failed to sew up an alliance with the Congress. Without Amar Singh and the Bollywood star power that he commands, it appears unlikely that the SP will ever be the force it was. Once voters sense that this boat is sinking, many will quickly hop over to the one that they believe can complete the journey.

Is, then, UP going the Congress way?

As early as in March 2008, when there were some signs of the Congress going back to the SP, the party it had dumped just before the Assembly elections in 2007, I had written that the only party that would gain from an alliance between the two would be the latter. The Prime Minister's determination to go through with the Indio-US Nuclear Deal, despite the opposition of the Left, meant that the Congress had no choice then but to embrace Mulayam Yadav. And he obliged, thanks in no small measure to Amar Singh who played a key role in ensuring that the the government won the Confidence Vote in the Lok Sabha.

For a short honeymoon period, the friendship between the two parties appeared unshakeable. But what Mulayam Yadav forgot was that with that one decision to share the bed of the Congress, he isolated himself from all his previous allies. All he was left with was a 'thank you' from the Congress and trust that gratitude would prevail over practical self-interest. The Congress too perhaps did not immediately realise that a real opportunity had opened up for it: there is no better way to defeat an opponent than by first isolating him.

In the event, the Congress eventually decided to take the only logical step available to it to rebuild itself in UP. Just before the Lok Sabha elections, it dumped the SP and decided to go it alone in the state. The results surprised every one, including the Congress, which was expecting a recovery over the long haul. Although there were various factors that led to its much improved performance, it drove home one basic lesson that it should never have lost sight of in the first place: an alliance with the either the BSP or the SP was not going to strengthen a very weak Congress.

Who could have imagined before May this year that the Congress, which had only around 8% of the vote share in the state, would emerge as one of the main contenders for power within such a short time? As things stand now, it is most likely that the the party will not only drastically improve its performance, it might even emerge as the single largest party in the next Assembly elections.

Amar Singh may shout and brag, but it is unlikely that he will ever be an independent player of any consequence in UP. At best he will be a spoiler in some constituencies. That is probably what he is going to leverage, to try and strike an attractive deal with the Congress at the right time.

There is a small window of opportunity here for the BJP too. But that party seems to be in utter disarray and hurtling towards where the Congress was a year ago. It has an almost impossible mountain to climb. Therefore, unless it puts in place new new leadership team which comes up with some refreshing and bold changes that can restore the almost completely destroyed credibility of the party among the people, it is likely to give a walk-over and watch from the sidelines the big fight that is likely to take place between the Congress and the BSP. If there is one lesson that the party needs to learn from its past experience and the manner in which the decision of the Congress to go it alone has dramatically altered the dynamics in its favour, it is that an alliance with Mayawati will be fatal. The only way it can rebuild itself is by going alone. With a little luck, the impact might be even be disruptive.

The third main player, Mayawati-led BSP, is in power now and has been doing well in the by polls. But, as we have seen earlier too, these results are not always replicated in the main polls. Mayawati will most likely hold on to her dalit base, at least till the next elections, even though Rahul Gandhi has been making concerted efforts to poach it with his well publicised night stays in dalit homes. But non-dalits are vulnerable. Muslim voters had migrated almost en bloc to the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, in what appears to have been a carefully coordinated strategy to defeat the BJP. With the SP now collapsing, they will most likely remain there, unless Mayawati can wean them with some dangerous promise that will only undermine her party in the long run.

Whichever way one looks at it, the one deduction that cannot be escaped is that everything is beginning to fall into place in favour of the Congress, not because of any wave generated by Rahul Gandhi, but because of extraneous developments that will result in even more voters gravitating towards it. UP may well see the return of Congress rule in the state after decades. Mayawati, who has a knack of surprising everyone, has a real challenge on her hands.
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NUCLEAR DEAL POLITICS: SINGH IS KINNG

The endless politicking on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, signed by the Government of India, eyes wide open, in 2005, has delayed its operationalisation to a point beyond which the deal will be as good as dead.

Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi were never in doubt that they would find it well nigh impossible to cobble up sufficient numbers in Parliament to keep the government going unless the Left, India’s commies, had a change of heart and went along with the government. The almost fatal mistake they made was believing that they could wear down the commies and get them to shed their visceral ideology based hatred to anything which spells US. That belief led to blunders for which the Congress has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price.

Just before the 2007 UP elections, the Congress dumped its ally, the Samajwadi Party(SP), discovering suddenly that it was a party of ruffians who were running a “goonda raj” in the state. The adjectives used by Congressmen those days for the SP were worse than below the belt stuff. In that one stroke of political foolishness, the party lost the support of 39 MPs, making it even more critically dependent on the commies. Congressmen somehow seemed to have totally forgotten that they and the commies were at the opposite ends of an irreconcilable ideological divide, and that the farcical temporary marriage of permanent political foes was based solely on their mutual hatred for the BJP.

What made the Congress take that disastrous road? As I had written in an earlier post too, the induction of Rahul Gandhi into UP politics and his decision to actively campaign for the Congress as its star campaigner made the party feel, thanks to an army of disconnected Family sycophants, that the party would dramatically improve its position in the state and emerge king maker, without whose support, no party would be able to rule.

When Mayawati emerged Empress on her own, surprising all and shocking many, the Congress started sucking up to her, with the initial objective of getting her support to get its Presidential candidate safely home. Then itself I had warned that Mayawati’s hug was the hug of death from which the Congress would emerge the loser. That realisation came a bit too late, after the Congress had suffered a series of defeats in various state elections, with the BSP eating critically into its dalit vote bank.

In another dramatic volte face in under a year, the Congress then started attacking Mayawati, cutting short the honeymoon and all but terminating the marriage. The final act was completed when on June 21, 2008, Mayawati, formally withdrew support to the ruling alliance. That took out 17 more MPs from Manmohan’s kitty.

The signs of a rapprochement between the Congress and the SP were visible as early as March this year, though both parties denied it then. The Congress had then itself quietly started preparing for the worst case scenario of the commies sticking to their guns on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal and withdrawing support to the government. The SP with 39 MPs is the biggest group that can help bail the government out once the commies and their 59 MPs formally walk out in a few days from now. If the SP plays ball, mustering the support of a few more MPs and strategically ensuring the absence/abstention of some more should not prove to be difficult task for the Congress.

In this scenario, Dr Manmohan Singh’s statement that the he sees the deal going through but does not see elections is not a wild shot of sentimental hope.

For perhaps the first time in India’s history, the ruling party/coalition and its supporters from outside are mortally afraid of facing elections even a day before the full term expires. Nobody, including the implacable commies wants elections now. Those in or on the periphery of power don’t want to lose even a day of heady power and the goodies it provides.

This across the board unwillingness to go to the people is actually the strongest weapon that this government has for mustering enough support to get the deal through. Only the commies, no matter how much they may not want elections, will not give in. Since they are stuck hopelessly in a dead-ideology trap, they cannot afford to be seen shedding it overnight just for power, particularly when it involves the US. Therefore, when it finally comes to the real crunch of defeating the government in Parliament on the nuclear deal, or as a consequence of it, you can bet that the government will manage to sail through.

In India, the power of greed can always be exploited and should never be underestimated.

Of course, the Congress will have to pay a heavy price to the SP whose support is critical. Who will be the real loser in this opportunistic, immoral and confused alliance? The answer is no different from the one about an alliance with Mayawati. The key question is: With a vote share of only about 8 per cent in UP, does the Congress have a choice? Watch this space.

A few words about the BJP. Support or otherwise of the BJP to the deal would have made no difference to the government’s chances of survival once the Left withdrew support. That is where the BJP made two terrible blunders.

That party would have grabbed such a deal gleefully had it been in power. But, since it was the Congress government led by Dr Manmohan Singh which managed to bag the deal, the BJP lost its larger sense of national responsibility and dived into the overflowing putrid stream of petty politics that has been the hallmark of India’s democracy for a long time now. The unstated reason for the BJP’s opposition to the deal was and is to deny Manmohan Singh the opportunity to ‘make history’ with this unique deal that has been offered only to India. Its inability to place national interest above petty political gamesmanship was the BJP’s first blunder. Admittedly, in India, we hardly talk on these lines yet; the BJP had a golden chance to be seen rising above the muck, but blew it. It is too late to start saying that the party will renegotiate certain provisions of the deal when it comes to power. That could and should have been said much earlier, and the deal supported.

The second blunder was its failure to realise that had it gone along with the government last year when it tried to take “the sense of the House” on the deal, it would have isolated the commies almost completely, dealing a political blow that the commies would not have recovered from for perhaps half a century. More importantly, with the deal through and the commies exposed and isolated in their withdrawal of support to the government, the Congress government may well have fallen subsequently at any time on an unexpected, even trivial issue, forcing the early elections that the BJP has been wanting.

The Indo-US Nuclear Deal is all but through. It is the triumph of Dr Manmohan Singh. He has stood up tall and firm despite an almost calumnious assault launched against him by some media barons, questioning his integrity, his legitimacy to take decisions, his disregard for electoral outcomes, his not paying heed to Sonia Gandhi who put him in the PM’s chair, his callousness in disregarding high inflation and concentrating on the deal which may not mean much to the common man etc.

The commies deserve kudos for at least sticking to their beliefs, however one may disagree with them. Surprisingly, their rigid and uncompromising stand against the deal has not drawn the kind of adverse reaction that Manmohan’s perseverance in pushing it through has, at least in some sections of the media. That is something which will baffle anybody trying to make a sense of what the hell is happening in this peculiar cauldron of India’s politics.

On July 03, 2008, the United National Progressive Alliance(UNPA), that includes Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP, will meet to finalise its stand on the nuclear deal. As is already evident, that meeting will bring the deal one critical step closer to finalisation. Then, on July 08, Dr Manmohan Singh will proceed to G-8 summit a taller, more confident Prime Minister of a billion plus people, a man who can speak his own voice. As indeed he should, no matter how he has got to the chair where the buck finally stops.

At that summit, world leaders will have no hesitation in agreeing that the erudite, soft-spoken Dr Manmohan has, finally, proved that ‘Singh is Kingg'.

MAYAWATI'S HUG OF DEATH

Some years back, BSP ideologue and Supremo, the late Kanshi Ram had described the BJP and Congress parties as 'Saanp Nath'(King of Snakes) and 'Nag Nath'(King of Cobras). Both, he said, were equally dangerous and any opportune and momentary understanding with either of these parties would be entered into by the BSP only and only if it benefited the march and rise of the bahujan samaj (dalits) to power. His words never got past the ears that should have been listening and the minds that should have been trying to analyse his conceptual and strategic framework . He was lucky, as the political class at large has become almost completely focussed on winning the next election alone, and has lost the ability to see beyond. Perhaps this is due to the huge money involved in gaining political power, a subject of a separate discussion some other time.

A series of alliances with both the Congress and the BJP, including electoral and power sharing, followed, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, the home turf and laboratory of the BSP. Both the Congress and the BJP thought they had an unbeatable winning combination with the BSP, and that Mayawati, Kanshi Ram's heir, really had no choice but to align with either of them, and depend on them, if she wanted to get and keep power in any state. It probably never even crossed their mind that Mayawati's ambitions were far more encompassing, both for herself and the dalits, at the national level. Even more unrealistic to them, as well as to most experts and the media, seemed the possibility of Mayawati doing it virtually on her own from a dominant position, given the complex distribution pattern of dalits in various constituencies and states. Also, the dalits had many claimants to their votes, the Congress being historically the most prominent, and no one thought Mayawati could wean them away almost en block.

Both the Congress and the BJP have wooed Dalit voters in completely different ways. The BJP has used the hindutva plank to garner Hindu votes, while the Congress has, since independence, projected itself as the saviour and protector of the downtrodden. The BJP's emotive plank worked briefly on the Ram Mandir agenda which, obviously, could not could not continue to attract voters of lower castes indefinitely. The Congress, on a steady decline for the last 30 years, but for electoral successes in the wake of the assassinations of Mrs Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, has increasingly lost touch with the masses, by banking solely on the Gandhi brand.

Crucially, both these major parties have also completely failed in throwing up credible dalit leaders, who can give a sense of real empowerment to the dalits. The BJP and the RSS, have traditionally been, and continue to be, dominated by the upper castes.Their brand of hindutva is mostly focussed on the Hindu-Muslim divide, and is nicely comfortable with the gross and cruel inequities in Hindu society and the continued exploitation and suppression of dalits. The Congress, on the other hand, has seen the systematic elimination of all leaders of stature who could mount even a remote challenge to the Gandhi family. The last dalit leader of any significance in the Congress was Jagjivan Ram, decades ago. Other than the Gandhis, the core of the Congress of the future is now nothing more than a bunch of young, westernised, English speaking, urbane 'leaders' whose main claim to leadership is in 10 Janpath rather than the hot and dusty 'jan paths' of real Indians who live out in the country.

Kanshi Ram realised that dalits constituted an extremely significant chunk of voters with the potential to grab power in a democratic setup, on their own. He was also quick to realise that all political parties were dominated by upper castes, and that centuries old prejudices, practices and mindsets would continue to ensure that dalits would always play second fiddle to them in these parties. The only, and extremely tough, option was to galvanise dalits as a new and separate political force. When the BSP won just two seats in the Lok Sabha, political 'pundits'(pun intended), were quick to dismiss the dalit challenge. They remained smug in their caste determined intellectual superiority and the belief that dalits could never rise uncomfortably and would continue to accept the 'condescending, patronising, laptop empowerment'(words of Sagarika Ghose) that Congress and other parties had on offer. Real power would remain securely beyond the reach of dalits.

Mayawati saw the opportunity which most analysts and the media thought was non existent. First she placed a healing, dalit hand on the dalits which gave them unprecedented confidence and assurance, almost as if an unbearable load of a thousand years had been taken off their aching backs. This phenomena just could not be comprehended by the elite who have never been touched by caste discrimination which their 'untouchable' countrymen face even today. Having got the dalits solidly behind her in UP, Mayawati dextrously made both the 'snake kings' dance to her music, which they did almost like zombies. They thought they were too smart for this crude and brash Hindi speaking dalit lady who had to be kept in good humour, to keep their own loyal dalit voters in the flock! Then, thanks to Mandal commission which enabled reservations for all but the upper castes, Mayawati touched the very raw Brahmin nerve, telling them that they no longer needed to go begging to anyone to get their due. To everyone's disbelief, Brahmins of UP hastily shed centuries of prejudice and accepted a dalit as their leader. And, Mayawati, to everyone's 'shock and awe', won the UP elections on her own.

Mayawati's hug of death has almost killed the BJP in UP. It has also ensured that the almost dead Congress is not even able to feebly raise its smashed head, despite the strongest available antigen of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, being made available in full measure. She is set to repeat her strategy in other states too, though the operational details might be different, depending on local factors. After getting to power in UP, Mayawati seems to be becoming a trustworthy ally of the Congress. Her votes in the Presidential and Vice Presidential elections, lifting the ban on movement of Delhi buses into UP, turning the screws on Anil Ambani and Amitabh Bachchan etc, have won her the favour of 10 Janpath. Mayawati has embraced the Congress again, a warm, sisterly embrace.

The Congress is literally on the huge horns of a fateful dilemma. Mayawati's hug is of death again, howsoever warm and reassuring it may feel now. If the embrace is spurned, death is again inevitable, but it will be painful, as Mayawati will emerge the victorious victimised dalit. The BJP is unwanted for the moment by Mayawati but is no safer. Kanshi Ram had correctly identified the worst enemies of the dalits and had forged a formidable weapon in the shape of the BSP to counter them. Mayawati has finally found the right explosive mix needed to deliver a fatal blow.

Both the BJP and the Congress have to find a way quick to deal with this weapon of their mass destruction. Will they find it? The answers are certainly not going to be found by westernised, alien urbanites who are 'blind to religion', a la Rahul Gandhi. Nor will they be unearthed by tilak wearing hindutva protagonists, inherently disdainful and unaccepting of dalits rising even a notch above them in the social power matrix.

The stark fact is that the rise and rise of dalit power has to be accepted without flinching and with due dignity and respect. The power balance in the mainstream political parties has to move to the lower castes unambiguously. That can only happen if the final authority in the party is a dalit. Will it happen? Till it happens, one can be certain that there will be no really effective challenge to Mayawati, who is certain to become the Prime Minister of India much sooner than we think. And given her enormous intelligence and indomitable will , she just might prove to be the best thing that has happened to India since, yes, Mahatma Gandhi.
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3. Mayawati: spoiler or saviour?
4. Is Modi BJP's answer to the Manmohan Mayawati challenge?
5. Looking for India's Obama in Harvard!

MAYAWATI AND DALIT POWER

This article was written by me in May and was first published in the Hindustan Times on May, 17 2007 under the title 'Mayawati and the emergence of Dalit Power.'
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Watching the coverage of the UP election results on various channels was illuminating in more ways than one.

The stark disconnect of various presenters and guests, particularly on NDTV, from the dynamics, as it were, of the elections and the real people who voted was painfully palpable. Our urban elite have been so completely alienated from people living in the rest of India, much like the patronising, condescending and smugly all-knowing Englishmen they are desperately trying to become, that most were not even able to comprehend that a very fundamental shift was taking place in the social dynamics that effect Indians. Almost like the British who simply could not fathom what Mahatma Gandhi was doing until it was too late! On NDTV, particularly, the debate anchored by Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt remained stuck in the street-smart rote of petty machinations and manipulations. With a few similarly myopic and dishonest politicians for support, they hopelessly tried to explain why their "intelligent" media representing the superior "English speaking universe" and their supposedly ultra sophisticated predictive models, totally failed not only to foresee what was coming but also to subsequently see what really happened.


The only thing Barkha Dutt saw, as she wrote glibly in the HT, was that the
voters were smart!


I recall the exit poll results after the first phase of polling on NDTV. The image that remained glued to my mind was that of Prannoy Roy hyper-excitedly telling viewers like a schoolboy that the "Rahul Gandhi" factor was working exceptionally well, almost in the fond hope that such proclamations would influence voters to vote for the Congress.This deception continued right till the very end even when all other exit polls were not half as gung-ho about Rahul's impact and the results started coming in. Psephology had obviously taken a backseat to the political agenda of the news channel. Even, when all was lost for the Congress, Roy and Dutt simply could not go beyond the usual brain-dead reasoning and the "analysis" of how the Congress was important to the BSP, particularly because of the Taj corridor case against Mayawati!


Not a word telling the viewers that Rahul Gandhi could get victory for his party in only six of the 108 or so constituencies he vigorously campaigned with virtually saturated media coverage. Such a huge investment of airtime and money wasted... they both seemed more devastated than the Congress for this loss and completely oblivious to the monumental significance of Mayawati's victory.

I must, in all fairness, bring out that the coverage on CNN-IBN was professional, unbiased and quite insightful. Sagarika Ghose, particularly, seemed to grasp the significance of Mayawati's magic and Rahul's rout, having spent some time on the ground during the elections with an obviously intelligent, open and receptive mind. She was dead right when she told Jayanti Natarajan that Dalits and others could no longer be won over by the patronising, condescending, laptop empowerment that the Congress was offering. Ghose saw, on the ground, the commitment and missionary zeal of BSP workers and what Mayawati's victory meant to them. Before the elections, she even could see BSP getting around 180 seats. Roy, on the other hand, during his brief sojourn to the hot, dusty plains of western UP close to Delhi, not only appeared as if he had been roasted in an oven, but could see nothing except Rahul's big impact and some incendiary speeches made by BJP leaders, as if that would help the Congress.


The UP election signals a tectonic shift in the power matrix of Hindu society. And who has Mayawati to thank, among others for seeing and grabbing the opportunity? Mr Mandal, of course, milked to death by completely opportunistic and dishonest politicians thinking they can fool the masses, simply to grab power in the next election. VP Singh brought Mandal out, not with any visionary belief or empathy for the downtrodden, but simply to create a vote bank for himself. For the same reason, on August 15, while addressing the nation, he declared the Prophet's birthday a national holiday (it is not a holiday even in Pakistan!). Once the Mandal genie was out of the bag, it simply could not be put back as doing that would have cost any political party unacceptably. Such measures cannot win you votes, as VP discovered, but the political class has yet to. Once I am a declared an OBC, why should I vote for you, that is if I can even pinpoint you as the benefactor? The voter is not fooled. He knows why you have done it and moves on to whom he wants. Someone should have read about Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs to understand that there would be virtually no political returns to either of these measures.


And, it has taken a Hindi speaking "uncultured" Dalit lady to understand the hidden, but obvious now, ramifications of Mandal so that she can reap its benefits enduringly. Unlike the SCs, who have for thousands of years been deprived of both social and economic empowerment and, therefore, justifiably need support to help them elevate themselves on both dimensions, but critically the social dimension first, the OBCs are disparate grouping, most of whom do not face social discrimination that the Dalits have endured.


Even Mahatma Gandhi could not discover OBCs as they have now been for petty and ulterior political gain. I recall when riots broke out after VP Singh announced Mandal, Jats protested most vocally for the first couple of days. However, when the news filtered down that Jats were among the OBCs and not upper castes in the Mandal report, they were smart enough to quietly accept the benefits. And, of course you know who they voted for! I understand there were similar scenes of some other communities too. What this has lead to over time is the feeling among the economically disadvantaged Brahmins and other upper castes that they have no one to take care of their interests and that they have to struggle for advancement with their hands tied behind their backs, while the socially similar, or even better placed OBCs are being courted by everyone.

So when Mayawati, a Dalit, untouchables still in parts of India, asks Brahmins to vote for her and tells them with conviction that they do not have to go begging to anyone to get their due, it touches their raw nerve, and they willingly turn thousands of years of rigid social hierarchy upside down to seek empowerment and justice from a shudra. Mayawati has envisioned and achieved something which no politician thought she could. Of course some urbane armchair "experts" who actually belong to the Page 3 but imagine that they are intelligent and erudite, cannot simply comprehend what an epoch-making change is unfolding, having never experienced caste barriers in their beautiful world.They need to revisit Mahatma Gandhi to even begin to understand India, much less talk absurd profundities about it on national media. Gandhi may be tough in these times. Mark Tully, a Brit, will be enough to shame them.

I hope Mayawati understands the importance of what she has initiated. With the exceptional intelligence and abilities that she has displayed so far, there appears to be little doubt that she does. If that is correct, Mayawati can bring about the social revolution that both Mahatma Gandhi and Dr BR Ambedkar dreamt of but could not achieve in their lifetime. In the pursuit of her objective, she will be well advised to continue to ignore the media, or at least the "intelligent" media, like she has done so far.
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Readers may also like to read:

1. Mayawati's hug of death
2. Single and on a mission: India's alpha (ge)Ms.
3. Mayawati: spoiler or saviour?
4. Is Modi BJP's answer to the Manmohan Mayawati challenge?
5. Looking for India's Obama in Harvard!

THE GANDHIS - CAUSE OF DEMISE OF CONGRESS?

The victory of Mayawati in the UP elections of 2007 is historical because it heralds the transfer of real political power to Dalits from patronising politicians who have pretended for decades to be their benefactors and friends, without ever giving them an equal seat at their table of power and social dominance. More significantly, the results signal the accelerating and almost complete marginalisation of the Congress party.in the state

The decline of the Congress actually started three decades back, when Mrs Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency, preceded by the hollow 'Garibi Hatao' slogan which enriched corrupt bureaucrats and politicians through the all pervasive licence-permit raj and enraged the common man, whose life became worse. After her rout in 1977, Indira Gandhi would never have come back to power had the ill-conceived Shah Commission not allowed her to project herself as a wronged angel. Again, after another four almost disastrous years in power, culminating in Operation Blue Star, she was on her way to another electoral defeat when she was shot by her bodyguards, leading to an extremely emotional electorate, forgiving everything and voting her innocent looking son into power with an overwhelming majority. Bofors and increasing arrogance cost him power soon, with a little nudge from V P Singh. Again, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated right in the middle of the general elections, there was an almost ten percent swing in favour of the Congress in the remaining phases, turning a certain defeat into a minority Congress govt. Rajiv and Narasimha Rao, thus, came to power not because of any TINA factor, but in the immediate aftermath of assassinations which clouded the real feelings and intentions of voters.These results conveniently concealed the changes that were unfolding in the political landscape of India. Tragically for the Congress, this gave even greater credence to the Nehru-Gandhi myth and converted more otherwise intelligent individuals into whimpering sycophants, to survive and build their political fortunes on that determining basis. As a result, the Congress has been reduced to nothing more than a family fiefdom.

Is the Nehru-Gandhi family the glue that holds together assorted parts of the Congress ship, or is it the lead which is actually sinking it? Within the Congress party and even without, in the numerous power centres that have flourished for decades solely because of the benign glance of the Family, there is an 'omerta' about any negative utterance, out of fear of swift banishment into nowhere. Due to this obsequiousness, an honest analysis and answer is impossible from them.That is the tragedy of the Congress, a tragedy which has been imperceptibly unfolding over the years and whose final chapter is now visible after the UP elections.

A number of writers and analysts have been comparing Rahul to Prince Harry and calling him our own Crown Prince, some even drawing parallels between his campaigning in UP to Harry's impending deployment in Iraq. See the seduction by the Family of some of our best political analysts? Harry is not going to Iraq as the Commander-in-Chief of Brirsh troops there, but as a junior military officer who will follow the combat commands of his military superiors . Prior to going there as a soldier, the Prince had undergone rigorous and regular Army training as a cadet and was commissioned into the Army as a subaltern. Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, descended briefly upon UP straight as the Boss, the Lexus Commander of the UP Congress Infantry. The only person entitled to command our Prince, or any other member of the Family, is Mother alone. Congressmen are meant to only prostrate and praise. It was painful watching Congress luminaries on TV claim UP results as the 'victory' of the Congress led by Rahul, because they defeated Mulayam and prevented the BJP from coming to power! Can it get any more demeaning?

A drop in the percentage share of the Congress despite the Rahul blitzkrieg is ominous. First, it is clear that today's Indians, except a few belonging to the 'superior' English speaking universe, are averse to remote patronising by the Family which is just not connected to the people. Some even consider it an affront that Rahul, after spending years frolicking abroad, when he should have been working for the party in India, should expect them to accept him as their ruler by right. He does not even think he is one of them, much less know what they want. Second, the eight odd percent people who voted for the Congress are only the old and dying, who continue to vote for the Congress, as they have done for decades, out of nostalgia and blind loyalty which is beyond reason. The young Indian just does not care about the Family, cannot relate to Rahul at all and has decisively moved away from the Congress which has no other credible party leader who can keep him interested.

The systematic destruction of leaders of stature in the Congress was started by Indira Gandhi, who was paranoid about losing power. Over the years, all other leaders have either moved away to different parties or have swallowed humiliation by Family loyalists thriving without any political constituency. The paranoia, in the meanwhile, has got worse. Manmohan Singh was anointed PM primarily because he posed zero threat, having absolutely no political following. Still, the 'party' did not take the risk of creating a danger, howsoever miniscule, to Family supremacy by permitting him to enter the Parliament through the Lok Sabha! The so-called illiterate voter understands all that; he is not fooled.

The core of the young Congress of the future is now nothing more than a closed club of English speaking, American educated, polished urban sophisticates who find it hard to travel even briefly to the heat and dust of India during elections in their latest SUVs, much like the Maharajas of yore They talk of economic growth in percentages rather than people, of CEOs and Expressways, rather than Panchayats and roads, hotels rather than houses, New Jersey rather than New Jalpaiguri, and the Family rather than the families who vote for them, hoping their lot will improve. On their own, these politicians will sink without a ripple; with the family, at least they will be afloat for as long and far as they can see, which is often to the tip of their own nose, and they don't give a damn to anything beyond that.

Dalits, the staple electoral fodder of the Congress for decades, have begun to find their own voice and empowerment like never before. Upper castes, who had been successfully poached by the BJP and have always had to fend for themselves, may now gravitate to the Dalit platform that Mayawati is trying to forge beyond UP and will probably succeed in doing because she will at least be perceived as being connected and responsive to the people even if she fails to fully live up to expectations. Better than puppets in power who cannot even sneeze without asking the Family in Delhi. Muslims will also be split between various parties on similar considerations, with an increasing number dumping the disconnected and dying Congress, which is again deluding itself into believing that the one time measure of giving reservations to Muslims will ensure Muslim votes in perpetuity..

The death of the Congress is near. Its resurrection is possible only if, somehow, it can loosen and get rid of the hangman's noose held tightly by the Family. Unfortunately, the present set of midgets who masquerade as leaders live on the oxygen being supplied by the Family. For the Congress to live, they have to 'die' and be replaced by real leaders who have their feet firmly planted among the people and their heads tuned to the aspirations and needs of the real India they want to rule. Will that happen? Can that happen?