It is not an arguable proposition that former Congressmen wanting to return to the fold – Mr Pranab Mukherjee and Mr Shyama Charan Shukla, for instance – should be allowed to do so. Indeed, it is rather surprising that the party president has not readmitted such men all this time. Their services can be valuable to the organisation in a variety of ways. By this reckoning, Mr Kamlapati Tripathi has done well to press this proposal in his letter to Mr Rajiv Gandhi. But there is no case for a general appeal to former Congressmen to return. It is, for instance, ridiculous for anyone to suggest that important opposition leaders such as Mr Chandra Shekhar and Mr Ramakrishna Hegde too remain essentially Congressmen and should, therefore, be welcomed back into the fold, should they be interested. The suggestion itself is insulting to them. Moreover, the country needs opposition parties as much as it needs a viable ruling party. And if some of the opposition parties are led by men who believe in the so-called Congress ideology, clearly a euphemism for a middle-of-the-road approach, it is all to the good. That facilitates the pursuit of consensus politics, that is, politics where differences are not ideological and therefore manageable within the broad democratic framework.
Specially at a time when Mr Gorbachev is wanting to reduce the power of the Soviet communist party over the government, it would be rather odd for Mr Tripathi to speak in terms of supremacy of the Congress party, if indeed he has used this expression in his letter to Mr Rajiv Gandhi. That is neither possible nor desirable. The Congress party lost its preeminence in 1947 itself when Mr Nehru took over as Prime Minister of independent India and it cannot possibly be restored. And surely the concept of the party’s supremacy cuts at the very roots of democratic and constitutional government where Parliament is supreme and an MP represents his constituency even if he is bound by his party’s discipline. The issues are in fact different. The Congress party is in bad odour with large sections of the people primarily because the performance of the government, especially at the state level, has been poor. Organizational problems, of course, need to be attended to. But it would be idle for anyone to expect that these by themselves can help restore the image and popularity of the party. For that the government’s performance is critical. Indeed, it is precisely because nominated chief ministers are generally not men of stature capable of providing effective government that it is necessary that they are elected by the legislature parties. Finally, till the next general election, the Congress needs above all a clear sense of direction and leaders in the state who have the necessary stature and acumen to lead the party to victory. Till then what it can least afford is the kind of ad hocism that has characterized Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership.