Will Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty Reboot or Fade Out?
http://www.newindianexpress.com/electio ... te]Drawing room and tea-stall chatter nowadays centres on whether the 128-year-old no longer a Grand Old Party will be able to reach the 100-seat mark in the 545-member Lok Sabha in which two MPs are nominated.
It must be mortifying for the Congress that this figure has become something of a psychological marker. There will be a faint sigh of relief in its portals if the party can cross it, and a precipitous plunge into despair if it cannot.
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More than the future of the party, its members and supporters must be wondering about the fate of the dynasty. Will it gradually fade away or will be it be able to lift itself by the bootstraps to face the challenges which it never anticipated ?
Since four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family - from Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi - have been the mainstay of the Congress, it will not be easy for the party to cut its umbilical links all of a sudden.
The expectation is that not only will the party men feel like orphans in the dynasty's absence, unable to think and decide for themselves, but that there will be no one to keep them from indulging in fratricidal warfare - a role which only the family was capable of playing.
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Ironically, it is the Congress's arch-opponent, Modi, who has taken advantage of the prevailing mood of free enterprise although it is the Congress's prime minister, Narasimha Rao, who opened up the economy in 1991.
Is the fact of Rao not being a family member (though a loyal Congressman) a cause of annoyance to the family's feudal instincts, making it virtually disown the economic reforms which he started?
It is no secret that Sonia's disinterest in the reforms inhibited the Manmohan Singh government from energetically pushing them forward, thereby slowing down the growth rate in the last few years. The sluggishness could not but have pleased Aruna Roy, a member of the left-of-centre National Advisory Council (NAC) led by Sonia, who had been bemoaning the government's emphasis on growth.
Since charisma is much more than just being good-looking, the family will have to come to grips with the changes that have taken place since Sonia learnt her first lessons in realpolitik in Indira's household and Rahul came of age. The major change is that socialism has become "outdated", as Manmohan Singh said, probably in sorrow, because the doctrine has a fairly high number of followers in India.
They are present not only in the communist parties, but also in the academia and in the NAC. It is the "inputs" which this outfit gave to Sonia which derailed the reforms process. The Congress itself has a number of socialists in its ranks, including Defence Minister A.K. Antony and the Kerala unit, which refused to allow foreign investment in the retail sector in the state.
If the Congress is to have some chance of success in the election after the forthcoming one, which may be earlier than in 2019, it has to pay heed to
Amartya Sen's call for a right-wing, market-oriented, secular party. For an avowed leftist like the Nobel laureate to take this line is probably an appeal to the Congress.
If the Congress pays no attention, the field will be left open for a right-wing, market-oriented party which cannot be called secular.[/quote]When did Sen abandon dolenomics!!!