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'I want to ask the Congress only one question: What is more important than election management in politics?'
As the next round of state elections looms in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the Congress seems like it has still to overcome the shock defeat in Haryana.
It also needs to strengthen the INDIA bloc, currently a house divided.
The Congress leadership cannot let things slide, but needs to take decisive action in ensuring that the party does not lose the momentum it gained after the Bharat Jodo Yatra and the Lok Sabha elections.
"In politics there is no silver medal," Rashid Kidwai, veteran Congress watcher and author of 24 Akbar Roadand Sonia-A Biography, tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com in the concluding part of an illuminating interview.
When was the last time the Congress took action against leaders after they failed to deliver in elections?
If Rahul Gandhi wants to make a 'Naya Congress', he has to be more ruthless.
In any political party, if there is a crisis of confidence, then you make an example out of (failed leaders).
I recall there was some suspicion against R K Dhawan after Indira Gandhi's assassination and he was benched for a considerable amount of time.
I have also seen the fate of Pranab Mukherjee going that way. He left the Congress and even when he came back to the Congress during Rajiv Gandhi's time he kept a very low profile. It was only later, when P V Narasimha Rao became prime minister, that he got importance in the party.
Political parties function on an informal level too and Rahul Gandhi and Kharge have all the right to see if some Congress leader is under suspicion.
If the Congress speaks of probity in public life, then the party has to have high standards that it needs to maintain.
What about the fact that the vote share in Haryana between the Congress and BJP was less than 0.9 percent?
Statistics and vote percentage share logic have always been a loser's argument.
Look at Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP too is saying the same thing that they got a higher percentage of votes as the single largest political party. (The BJP won 26 percent votes, the National Conference 23 percent votes and the Congress, which was in alliance with the NC, won 12 percent votes).
The BJP did not form the government in J&K as they got only 29 out of 90 seats.
Though this argument is not without merit, in politics there is no silver medal as you have come second and are not able to form the government.
Defeat by one vote or one lakh votes is still defeat. At the end of the day someone has won and someone has lost.
And in Haryana, if the Congress assessment was 55 seats minimum before the elections, then it should have got at least 45 seats, a simple majority to form the government in the state.
Is there a lesson for the Congress to learn as its Dalit leader Kumari Selja was kept away from campaigning by its Jat leader Bhupinder Hooda which dented its chances?
The Congress has a legacy of regional satraps in every state.
In Karnataka they had Siddaramaiah, M B Patil and D K Shivakumar and yet they won.
In the old days for a state like Madhya Pradesh, the Congress had Arjun Singh, the Shukla brothers (Shyama Charan and Vidya Charan) and Digvijaya Singh who would do well in elections in their respective regions for the party.
This led the party come to power.
Now since that has become a deadwood model in today's time, the Congress has to come up with a new model.
But this argument only comes when the Congress is defeated. When it did a little better in the parliamentary elections by winning 99 seats, this argument was not made.
The Congress became a victim of its own propaganda and self-belief that it was winning Haryana. Hooda and his team did booth management too, but what defies logic is how Kumari Selja was allowed to sulk for 14 days!
She is a former Union minister and Lok Sabha member. She should not have sulked for 14 hours, but here she was not on the ground before elections for 14 days.
She should have taken an active role and taken sides.
In elections you need to take decisive action.
(Congress President Mallikarjun) Kharge and Rahul Gandhi knew Hooda and Selja don't speak to each other, so why did nobody intervene and bring about a truce between them?
The Congress needs to sort out inner rivalry among big leaders in the party before elections.
The party needs to have an inhouse election management system rather than outsourcing this job.
This inhouse election management system can bring out the true position of the party before elections.
People doing surveys need to be bona fide members of the Congress so that they cannot go wrong. Party members will give honest feedback.
Was Sunil Kanugolu, the poll strategist, doing pre-election surveys for an outside party?
I assume so as his team does not have Congressmen and women. They would be professionals.
There has to be an in house 24x7 election management setup in the Congress.
The party has not only got good man managers, but poll strategists too.
There is a Congress war-room strategist, Sasikant Senthil,the Lok Sabha member from Tiruvallur, Tamil Nadu. Sasikant is an ex-IAS officer.
Then they have inhouse talent in Praniti Shinde, the MP from Solapur, and Sachin Pilot too.
There is so much talent in the Congress, but they are not in the election management system.
I want to ask the Congress only one question: What is more important than election management in politics? They are not doing it right.
What about INDIA? Do you see any hope now after the Haryana elections?
Here too see the irony.
Arvind Kejriwal was released from jail before the Haryana elections. Congress leaders as the main party of the INDIA bloc had all the time to forge an alliance with AAP and win the elections.
They did not do it in time.
AAP wanted nine seats and the Congress wanted to give not more than five seats, and eventually that alliance didn't go through. As a result of which AAP took away 1.8 percent of Opposition votes which was a huge dent for the Congress.
Now, if this 1.8 percent vote was concentrated in 10 constituencies, then this would have been of great consequence to the Congress.
Does it mean the Congress alone cannot take on the BJP and it needs INDIA?
There is a lot of confusion now.
Post June 4, the Congress should have advanced the INDIA story everywhere, be it in the media or building a narrative for the state elections.
At present, it looks like the INDIA story is different from the Congress story.
Rahul Gandhi apparently seem to be doing the Congress story, therefore the INDIA story looks like it has no role.
I can understand the Samajwadi Party has not much stake in Haryana or Madhya Pradesh, but there could have been a sense of involvement in the Haryana elections.
There is Ahir land in Haryana where a lot of Yadav community people live so it required mobilisation (by getting SP chief Akhilesh Yadav to campaign).
Rahul's Bharat Jodo Yatra was successful because it had a lot of involvement of civil society as 137 civil society organisations joined him.
This will not help you get votes in thousands, but even if you get a few hundred extra votes, it helps to build a narrative.
The Congress needs to have some inhouse person to do these things.
Let there be some kind of general secretary who has to go and do outreach.
All those people who are not part of the Congress but opposed to the BJP, there has to be some kind of meeting ground with them.