Congress and the Gandhis

The Congress Party, long under the control of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, will only have 44 MPs in the 545-member lower house of the Indian parliament Lok Sabha, after winning 206 seats in 2009.

The family, which has produced three prime ministers, has rarely appeared so politically impotent and forlorn as in the last few days. After all, the Congress Party is used to being in power. It has ruled India for all but 13 years since its independence from Britain in 1947. The Gandhis have always been hugely important to the party as vote-winners and have produced a series of charismatic leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and his wife, Sonia Gandhi.

But the latest in line, 43-year-old Rahul Gandhi, does not appear to be cast in the same mold. His election campaign was widely described as being lackluster and out of touch with the aspirations of ordinary Indians. According to DW correspondent Kuldeep Kumar, "Rahul did not inspire with his speeches, there was a very obvious disconnect between him and the people."

Young voters in particular opted for Modi's promise of jobs rather than the traditional patriarchal approach of the Gandhis, namely patronage in the form of huge employment programs for the rural poor.

"Economic growth and social mobility have radically transformed how younger Indians think and behave. No longer deferential or unquestioning, they ask for evidence of Rahul Gandhi's own contribution apart from his family lineage. These are few", says historian Ramachandra Guha. More than anything else, Gandhi's decision to target Narendra Modi with a negative campaign rather than underlining his own qualities and ambition as a leader backfired dramatically.

Both Rahul and his ailing mother, 67-year-old Sonia Gandhi, (main picture) the leader of the party, tendered their resignations in the wake of the landslide electoral defeat. Their expressions revealed that they were both aghast about the scale of their defeat and unable to comprehend it. The result did not match the traditional script which normally ends with a Gandhi victory. Rasheed Kidwai, a biographer of the family describes the dilemma facing Congress: "If the Gandhis go, the party won't know what to do, if they stay, the party is on its deathbed”.

Not surprisingly, loyal senior party figures who simply cannot imagine their party without the Gandhi family, immediately rejected the offers of resignation from the party leader and her deputy. Observers point out that senior Congress leaders are traditionally deferential to the Gandhi clan. They offered no resistance when Sonia Gandhi nominated Rahul as the party's lead campaigner in the elections, a position which would have made him an automatic choice for prime minister, had Congress prevailed.

Protecting the Gandhis

After the scale of the defeat became known, senior party officials were falling over each other to divert the blame for the defeat from South Asia's first dynasty: Outgoing premier Manmohan Singh took the responsibility for the "inadequacies of the government," a reference to the "issues of inflation and corruption" and stressed that the resignations of Sonia and Rahul would achieve nothing.

Kamal Nath, the most senior MP in parliament and a member of Congress blamed the defeat on the fact that the people had simply had it too good: "Rahul Gandhi just came to the forefront eight months ago…we had great programs, we were not able to get them down to the people - whether it was the right to education, our roads program. People did not buy these things because they thought we should be having them in any case."

With the airwaves full of excuses for the Gandhis, supporters rallied around Rahul calling on him to stay. But senior party members like Kamal Nath recognize that there has to be a serious analysis of what happened: "We have got a drubbing. This is a debacle which was unforeseen and we have to introspect."

Just where this analysis of the defeat will lead is unclear. But faced with a revitalized and dominant BJP led by a Prime Minister with the strongest mandate to govern in a generation, Congress has a choice to make. It can either stick with Rahul Gandhi and hope for better times or open up the party to new ideas and new leaders in an effort to mount an effective opposition until the next elections.

And therein lies the problem. The party has been run by India's first family for decades and has failed to develop and nurture leaders at state level. And when it has, those leaders' wings have been clipped quickly to prevent a challenge to the Gandhis. This means it lacks alternatives. As Kuldeep Kumar puts it: "If you remove Sonia and Rahul, the whole leadership structure is set to collapse. In any political party people should rise through the ranks.

The alternative

But there might be another very tempting and more traditional option: 42-year-old Priyanka Gandhi. Rahul's younger sister came to the fore in the final stages of the campaign in a bid to prevent Rahul's campaign from imploding. She developed an instant rapport with voters, listened to their concerns and offered them hope.

At one rally Congress supporters were so impressed by Priyanka's confident and charismatic performance that they unveiled a huge banner: "Priyanka – take command!" For Kuldeep Kumar, Priyanka is the discovery of the campaign on the Congress side: "She is a much more natural leader than Rahul Gandhi, she speaks Hindi very well."

But Kuldeep Kumar does not believe a decision to replace Rahul with Priyanka will be taken by the party, instead – as with all questions relating to party leadership - it will be reserved for the Gandhi family. "It all depends on her (Priyanka) and Sonia Gandhi, well between the two of them whether they decide (on this course of action),” he says.

Thus a change of leadership behind closed doors would appear to be the next logical step to take.