What is the Congress smoking?

I have a teenage daughter who just loves everything about the sixties -- the clothes, the attitudes, and especially the music.

She has some idea also about the excesses of that era, but obviously is too young to know about how the funny bone gets tickled with a little experimentation with an ancient Indian weed.

But a headline, front page news item in the Indian Express on Tuesday, September 2, filled this void in her knowledge about that great era. Since no one will believe me, let me quote in some detail: "Warning its cadres of the likelihood of early general elections, the Congress high command has instructed its state units to bring to a halt rail traffic across the country for an hour on September 22."

Why should this be done? Because, the Congress circular states, elections are around the corner and therefore it is necessary "to take all steps and measures to expose the hollow promises of the BJP."

What were these promises? No idea, but likely to be a robust economy, a joyous monsoon, stable prices, bulging foreign exchange reserves, booming stock market, and Indian industry with a new found spring in its step.

What else do politicians promise? Never mind; what 'steps' should be taken? Congress workers should picket "Central government offices like railways, post offices, telephone exchanges. If need be, the workers could court arrest. These programmes should not be symbolic".

After I stopped laughing, I wanted to know what was funny (it happens when you are high, you know). Let me see. The Congress ruled India for too long according to most observers -- some 40 odd years in the Republic's history of 56 years.

In the bygone era, stalwarts like George Fernandes (now a leading light of the BJP) led stoppages of buses and trains to protest against anything, even the Congress.

Why, he was even known to lead a protest against protest. India was a poor country then and unemployment was high and people, even upper class types, had a lot of time on their hands.

Today, the Chinese dragon is breathing down most of our backs; the Chinese bamboo is making sitting idle a wee bit uncomfortable. The world, and India, has globalised; the race is on, literacy among young folks is upwards of 90 per cent, and female confidence, and their labour force participation, is on the rise.

In other words, families want to improve their well being, are working hard, and have no time to waste, especially for a bygone political party.

Even if the Pope came, he is unlikely to receive much of an audience, especially around peak worktime. So what is the Congress smoking which leads it to think that its anachronistic methods of political protest will work, beyond creating derisive laughter, of course?

But the malaise extends deeper than the funny bone. The party has been out of power for the last eight years.

These years have witnessed rapid economic growth, in large part because of the continuation of the economic reform policies initiated by the Congress itself in 1991-93.

The Congress also has some of the best and brightest chief ministers in the country -- and not just one, but at least five (Delhi, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan) so there is obviously no shortage of talent or ideas. Then how come the party is caught in a time warp?

Because of a Web of its own making. There was a time, a long time ago, when India was entirely feudal.

In that era, we bowed to our masters, and as they commanded, so did we follow. It was also a time of either battling for independence, or just beginning to grow up.

We needed heroes, we needed leaders, and we would have followed the Pied Piper anywhere, whoever she might have been. It turned out that the Nehru-Gandhi family had the halo.

A dynasty, just like royalty, does not require talent -- destiny is its goal scorer. But a funny thing happens with development and globalisation -- the feudal order goes for a six, and merit replaces inheritance.

The Congress should learn from the experience of the Kennedys in the US. This was a dynasty family, a family which simultaneously appeared on both page one and page three. And then the tune off and with it the turn off.

One could try and pinpoint the turning point; most likely it was Chappaqudick, the place where Edward Kennedy, the last of the senior Kennedy brothers, was involved in a car accident in which a young woman died.

None of the new generation of Kennedys are anywhere close to power; the tune off is complete.

If history repeats here, forget Sonia, even her daughter Priyanka Gandhi will find it very difficult to get elected as prime minister.

So the Congress is desperate and consequently flails about for an identity, for a purpose, for a raison d'etre. Today it is rasta roko; tomorrow it is reservation for the backward castes in the private sector.

"Through a select group of her party colleagues, Congress President Sonia Gandhi has begun engaging various members of industry and commerce on the issue of reservation for weaker sections in the private sector" ran a story in the Hindustan Times, September 3, just a day after the funny story about work stoppage.

Do these clueless in wonderland out of office Congressmen have no idea about what other nations have attempted? Malaysia, which by all accounts ran a successful affirmative action programme for Malays in the eighties and nineties (and which is a model for the South Africans attempting to do the same) never once tried to advocate reservations in the private sector.

To be sure there was jawboning, coaxing and cajoling but it always fell short of a commandment. Reservations were instead reserved for the more goody public sector -- no one expects it to be efficient anyway, so it is a perfect place to experiment. That, thankfully, has been the Indian policy so far until the party in search of a cause came to town.

Besides being anachronistic, is there anything the Congress can do to save itself from itself? Like any corporation, it needs to recognise its assets -- and these it has plenty in the form of chief ministers and members of Parliament.

It needs to recognise that the world has changed, India has changed and so laughably absurd stuff like standing in front of railroad tracks to protest the functioning of a government is from films about events literally more than a hundred years ago.

It needs to recognise that the only people who want Ms Sonia Gandhi as leader of the Opposition is the BJP --they want insurance against their own ineptitude. They should realise that people, very naturally, vote differently in state and national elections. So the fact that Congress has in its control 15 state governments does not mean that it can win the next national election.

It won't, it cannot. It should realise that what they thought was the Great White Hope may indeed be the Great White Hopeless. It should set about finding a new leader, who can hopefully lead it with a hope for victory.

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