The Congress reinvents itself

For consider how used we have become over the last few years to the concept of the anti-incumbency vote. Every election it seems these days does little more than punish successive governments. And once the amusement of seeing shell shocked disbelief on the faces of candidates who had all but declared themselves winners was past, it is likely that we would have been left with the depressing realisation that, in a few years, we will probably go through the same upset again. And regardless of how exciting it may seem in the short term, a repeated anti-incumbency vote is indicative of powerlessness rather than power. It suggests that people are left with no other method of expressing their dissatisfaction than to go through the wasteful motions of voting out party after party with no hope of redemption.

The big news is not the defeat of the BJP but the style of the winners, particularly the Congress.

Is this the party that declared the Emergency? Is this the party that presided callously over the massacre of innocent Sikhs? Is this the party that propagated an internal dictatorship and was racked with allegations of corruption? Up until a couple of years ago, its leader Sonia Gandhi was being criticised for disregarding senior leaders within the party and maintaining a haughty silence, both on issues and her future plans. Is this the same party and the same leader, now talking the language with conviction, of inclusiveness, humility and renunciation?

It is early days yet, of course, and despite Sonia Gandhi’s very credible sincerity and Manmohan Singh’s reputed integrity, there is ample time for a return to old style power jockeying and scamming. But language has its place and should not be disregarded. To point out just one tiny yet hugely significant linguistic shift is how with the changed power equation we are back to talking about “secular” denoting something that is, as opposed to “secularist”, a term favoured by the BJP, denoting an aspiration to be.

The language gives hope. Hope not just as far as a particular party or government is concerned but for the democratic process itself. Hope that even if one or maybe two anti-incumbency votes do not do the needful (Indira Gandhi returned even more imperious in 1980 after her disastrous showing in 1977), repeated reversals can indeed succeed in knocking the arrogance of power out of leadership. If the new government can convince us of this, then there is reason for optimism.

And if it does not, then there is a need for a mechanism to sound the alert way before the noisy, expensive hoopla of elections. In the apparent transformation of the Congress there is a lesson not just for the political class but for the governed as well. If contemporary political parties seem to need a repeated dose of failure to learn accountability, voters perhaps need to understand that a liberal and humane society cannot be expected as a matter of right; it has to be sustained through reversals and opposition. And it takes time. And the only way to strengthen it is to keep alive the institutions that were meant to preserve democracy, to act as organs of public dissent or approval in the huge gaps between elections. Institutions such as the courts, the media and citizens’ movements. Democracy needs constant dialogue. And the responsibility is on both sides.