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It's Party Time For The Congress

By ugesh sarkar, Section Top Stories
Posted on Sun Dec 27, 2009 at 10:07:55 PM EST

GOOD GOING Cong hasn't had it so smooth in past 20 years as in 2009. But the mis-step in Telangana can pull the castle down for it

"It is now clear that there is only one major party, the Congress. The others are in the `other' category," said Congress MP Manish Tewari.

The year is 2009, though this confidence suggests the Congress has gone back to the days of 1971, when it could boastfully claim that there was in the country "one party, one leader".

The Congress has been on a roll this year. Contrast this with 1999, when the man on the street said the party had no chance of coming back to power in 20 years. Contrast with 2007 and 2008, when it lost power in Himachal Pra desh, Punjab, and Uttarakhand and could not regain it in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.

AFTER WINNING 206 SEATS IN LOK SABHA POLLS AND ANDHRA ELECTIONS, THE PARTY HELD ON TO POWER IN MAHARASHTRA, ARUNACHAL PRADESH AND HARYANA

The Congress stepped into 2009 with victories in Rajasthan and Delhi in December last year. After the creditable performance in the Lok Sabha polls of April-May, when it won 206 seats, and in the assembly elections of Andhra Pradesh, the party has managed to hold on to power Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana on the plank of governance and development. If Congress president Sonia Gandhi gave a pro-poor tilt to the party's agenda in 2004 and emerged as a champion of the common man, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with his intellectual image won over the middle classes.
And general secretary Rahul Gandhi emerged as a youth icon who sought to democratise and broadbase the organisation through the Youth Congress.

In 1985, when the Congress celebrated its centenary year, the then party president, Rajiv Gandhi, talked about power-brokers who were responsible for the erosion of values and ideals that the party stood for. This bit of self-criticism, many said, had come like a breath of fresh air. Now the Lok Sabha victory has come as the party is set to step into the 125th year of its existence on December 28.

Will Sonia replicate the boldness shown by Rajiv when she addresses her party members on Monday?
Not surprisingly for a party that ruled India for the better part of the post-Independence period and then found itself in the wilderness, the decisive victory in 2009 fed the Congressman's argument that it has regained its lost glory of becoming the principal political pole in the country and may someday in the not so distant future form the government on its own.

However, just when it seemed that it would end the year on a high note, the party shot itself in the foot in December by promising to initiate steps to create Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh. Since then, it has trying to find ways to douse the fire the announcement has created.

"The single-most important outcome of the Lok Sabha polls has been the test of the thesis of bipolarity the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been propounding. That thesis has been demolished," said Tewari.

Source: Hindustan Times It's party time for the Congress

Click On "Full Story" For More...

But there is a counter-view as well.
"If the Congress has done well in the Lok Sabha polls, it is because of the dynamics of coalition politics and because the opposition has been in disarray. It is true it formed a government at the Centre but in the Hindi heartland, it is the regional parties that dominate," said Bidyut Chakravarty, professor of politics at Delhi University. He noted that though the party won 21 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh, it failed to do well in the assembly bypolls. If Congressmen nurture the dream of forming a government on their own in the near future, it is because they believe the party took a major step in 2009. Although forced by circumstances to do so, the Congress overcame its mental block, shed its political crutches and went it alone in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The tactics paid off in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress had been going downhill for close to two decades after the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the BJP had eaten into its minority-Dalit-upper caste support base. With 21 of the 80 parliamentary seats in its kitty, the party finished second, behind the Samajwadi Party, in 2009.

In Bihar, the go-it-alone tactics did not translate into parliamentary seats.
But the UP showing gave the party enough confidence to believe that it can live without Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar and without major allies in Jharkhand. Though the Jharkhand polls delivered a fractured verdict and the Congress could not form the government, the party won 13 seats (four more than last time).

The party is now gearing up for elections in Bihar in 2010, and in Kerala and West Bengal in 2011.

In terms of numbers, the Congress is now in power in 12 states. But it has only two large states -- Maharashtra and trouble-torn Andhra Pradesh -- in its kitty. In all, these 12 states add up to only 157 parliamentary seats out of 543.
Then there are Jammu & Kashmir and Tamil Nadu, ruled by alliance partners.

But two big questions remain: Will the party be able to contain the passions fanned by its Telangana statement and deal with the rush of demands for smaller states now being made?
And will it be able to tackle prices that even Congressmen are worried about?

< A Laid - Back Fifteenth Lok Sabha

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