(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)Nobody seriously expected Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to resign from party positions at Monday's meeting of the Congress Working Committee. For better or worse - and on current evidence, largely for worse - the Congress is stuck with the Nehru-Gandhi leadership and will disintegrate if the promoter family just walks away.
Having said that, it would be disingenuous to pretend the Congress does not have a Nehru-Gandhi problem. Sonia's career is nearing its end. She has had a 15-year stint as Congress president. In the short run, she - and her lieutenants, such as Ahmed Patel - will re-impose their authority as the amateur lot surrounding Rahul Gandhi will be marginalised and mocked for running such a dead-on-arrival election campaign.
Yet, what beyond the short run? No doubt A.K. Antony or some such worthy will head a committee to go into causes for the defeat. It will blame the Manmohan Singh government and its absence of communication. It will suggest institutional measures and the creation of a Congress cadre and a process of political education for workers. Inevitably, nothing will come of it.
That the Congress needs to be democratic and elect its leaders, from the grassroots upwards, is an excellent idea. That it is a corrupt organisation, packed with wheeler-dealers and fixers, was admitted as far back as 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi, in a speech at the Congress centenary in Mumbai. Yet, let us be fair, many of these issues trouble other parties as well. They are long-term concerns for the Congress, no doubt, but they are not the reason the Congress lost India in 2014.
There are two big reasons for the Congress defeat. The first is leadership. It simply had nobody to match Narendra Modi. The counter to the BJP prime ministerial candidate's authoritative and booming speeches, whether you liked them or not, could not possibly come from Rahul's stream-of-consciousness rambling.
Priyanka Vadra is scarcely a viable alternative to her brother. Yes, she is a better speaker and comes across as more forceful. Even so, is she a better politician? We have no reason to believe so. To quote from Simon Denyer's recent book Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the Power of India's Unruly Democracy, "There is a sense running through Rahul's telling of history that his family could do no wrong, or indeed that they did no wrong."
From what we heard of her in Amethi, is Priyanka any different? Does this make her relevant to an India that does not believe it owes votes to the history of the Gandhi family?
Second, the Congress has been at its best when it has retained that acute and astute sense of balance between the left and right, represented the classic Indian centre and meant all things to all men. This may not always have been honest but made people comfortable and got votes.
In the past 10 years, the party has lost this positioning. As Indian society has tilted to the right, the Congress - astonishingly - has swerved wildly to the left. Sonia's National Advisory Council (NAC) cabal has left the Congress at its most left-wing in independent India, matched only by the Indira Gandhi period of 1969-71.
The Congress - or more specifically the theoreticians who surround Rahul and write his agonising speeches - believe this has made the Congress "ideological". Actually it has rendered it unelectable and alienated it from contemporary Indian aspirations and realities. Kamal Nath, the most senior Congress member of the 16th Lok Sabha, said as much the other day. He blamed the NAC activists but exonerated Rahul and Sonia. If the leaders who have brought in the bad ideas don't realise these are bad, what is the point of blaming the ideas themselves?
The biggest headache for the Nehru-Gandhi family is the fear a Narendra Modi government will open investigations into Robert Vadra's tax records, land deals and alleged international financial transactions. Should this happen, it will prove acutely embarrassing. As such, the Nehru-Gandhi family is in no mood to relinquish charge of the Congress - even gradually - and hand over leadership to a democratically-chosen alternative. Minus party control, it fears it will lose its protective shield.
Given this, any stand-in leader who comes in - if one comes in at all -- will have to ensure security for the extended Gandhi-Vadra enterprise. The actual task of recovering ground and winning elections can come later.
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