Allying with civil society congress kicks its dented can down the road acting like an ngo rather than a party that wants to fight

Allying with civil society congress kicks its dented can down the road acting like an ngo rather than a party that wants to fight

Congress has reportedly got the support of civil society organisations for its Bharat Jodo Yatra scheduled to begin September 7. There are two ways of reading this. One, as a good convergence. After all, both civil society groups and political parties have their bounded spaces but they also play a complementary role in making democracy’s mosaic and holding up its equilibrium. A partnership of the robust civil society organisation with the strong political party promises benefits to both — while the former deepens popular mobilisation, the latter aggregates issues and locates them in institutional frameworks for resolution. But is that the way it will be, when Congress is the political party holding up one end of the pact? The second — and more realistic — way of looking at the get-together in the capital’s Constitution Club on Monday is, therefore, this: A party progressively losing a sense of its own self is desperately seeking the civil society cover and crutch. In government, as the UPA, Congress was once accused of outsourcing policy to unelected and unaccountable civil society groups in the National Advisory Council —the criticism was deserved, some progressive NAC-guided legislation notwithstanding. Now, as the party of the Opposition, Congress is trying to outsource its politics to some of the same entities.

In this moment of BJP dominance, both Congress and civil society are besieged — but they are besieged differently. While Congress has slipped into an incoherence mostly of its own making, civil society has been the site, in recent years, of popular movements that have made a difference even as they have shunned parties. The farmers’ movement that began in Punjab and brought its battle to Delhi’s door led, eventually, to the government rolling back its farm laws that were reformist but which stoked anxieties it left unaddressed. The anti-CAA stir made a powerful statement against a discriminatory law that makes religion a criterion for fast-tracking citizenship to persecuted groups in selected countries. It is true that civil society is at the receiving end of strong-arm tactics by a government that weaponises loosely worded laws past their sell-by date. But by aligning with a party that has lost its own compass and bearings, civil society risks surrendering its claim of non-partisanship while gaining nothing.

Congress’s crisis begins from its top. It has a vacant space where its president should be — Sonia Gandhi is interim president while the party continues to look strikingly irresolute on its leadership question. Senior leaders opt out of committees and several have walked out of the party, some shed tears in public, others in private. It is not just that Congress does not talk to itself — it barely talks to other Opposition parties. This was evident in the elections for president and vice-president and it’s apparent in the lack of solidarity that other parties show Congress and that it shows other parties on the common threat posed by the ways in which CBI and ED are wielded by the government. By reaching out to civil society groups, Congress is only kicking its political can — dented and rusted — down the road. It is acting more like them, as an NGO, at a time when it most needs to be itself, and behave like a political party that wants to fight back and for what it believes in.