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Business News/ Opinion / The Congress needs five big wins
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The Congress needs five big wins

The party has to work on ideas, people, policies, institutions and its organization if it wants to win the next election

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

The Congress party has the next two to three years to turn itself around and regain the trust of voters and party workers. In his campaign rallies, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi kept talking about changing the system. He hasn’t explained what he meant by the system. In my view, this comprises ideas, people, policies, institutions, and its own organization. The Congress needs to achieve wins across all these five parameters urgently.

Ideas wins: Congress has talked a lot about rights-based approach. This cannot be the only idea that a national party needs to be known for. What are its ideas for economic growth? For the private sector? For Dalits and minorities? For businesses, small and big? For national unity? For Naxalism? What are the big ideas that the party is going to propound?

It is easy to pick a list of big ideas from the many lists floating around. What gives these ideas power is that many more people are articulating them, just like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) talked development. But for that the Congress needs people.

People wins: This starts with the party workers. Do they feel they have been consulted in these ideas that the Congress is going to articulate? Do they own them? Are they enthusiastic in propagating these ideas by their own words and deeds? Without having its own cadres, the Congress must emulate the communists in the 1970s and 1980s, the BJP (along with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in the 1990s; Mayawati in the 2000s, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the last year. Party workers are only the first step. There are other supporters whom the Congress must reach out to. Students, housewives, social activists, netizens, lawyers, etc. In this, of course, it can also emulate the winning coalition that the BJP created in the last six months.

Between 2014 and the next elections, the Congress must win millions more people. This needs both ideas, but also concrete policies as behooves a party with a long history of governance.

Policy wins: What are the Congress’ policies for generating and distributing electricity, on petroleum prices, on highways? What specifically will the party do to ensure speedier justice? To ensure environmentally-sustainable growth? How will it motivate entrepreneurs—big and small? How will it attract investment—domestic and foreign? How will it reform banking? How will it empower cities and ensure that urbanization becomes a boon rather than a bane? How will it empower budget private schools and private healthcare?

Well thought through policies are not just schemes in which thousands of crores of rupees are sunk nor are they laws passed by the Union government in isolation. They require action by states; by other stakeholders such as businesses and people’s groups; and by many other small reforms that bring about institutional change.

Institution wins: The Congress is in power in many states. What institution reforms are they undertaking, which will give voters credibility that the Congress is about change? How are Congress states reducing corruption? Or improving policing and judicial reforms? How are they reforming their municipal administrations? How are they empowering cities with directly-elected mayors. How are they making state legislatures more productive?

Institutional reforms are difficult. They need political backing, like the 73rd and 74th amendments that came through with political will. Still, the number of systemic reforms (which outlast the tenure of the government) that Congress-ruled states have done are not large. In the next three years, the Congress must ensure three times more institution wins than it has in the last ten years across all its states. All this requires that the party became much stronger internally.

Organization wins: How will the Congress improve its organizational effectiveness? Primaries and internal elections are a small part. How will it gauge the thoughts and concerns of its party workers? How will it respond to them? How will it improve its communication abilities—not just in TV studios, but in local languages and in-person meetings? How will it collect more money, spend it better, and be more transparent in its funding? How will it capture the implicit knowledge of all its seniors? How will it teach its legislators and members of Parliament to be more effective when they are in opposition? How will its many offices be managed better?

Without these five wins, the Congress is unlikely to win the next elections. But, each of these wins are hard. They need to be done in parallel. They also need to be rolled out through a participatory process—not imposed. They do not need more committees to write reports that aren’t implemented. They require action everyday by party seniors and juniors, starting now.

Harsh Shrivastava is a policy expert who has worked in the Planning Commission and the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as in the private sector.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

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Published: 21 Jul 2014, 05:45 PM IST
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