From being the party with the largest grassroot organization in the eighties and nineties, the Congress party suddenly finds itself with no grassroot organisation worth the name. No doubt there is a State committee and two district committees, but these are not election-oriented even though the party was in power for seven to eight years in the interregnum before the BJP stormed back to power.
Apart from this perhaps the arrogance of power and taking sections of society for granted saw the Congress reduced to single figures in the 2012 Assembly elections. This was in hindsight a precursor to the drubbing the party received in the Lok Sabha elections 2014.
Senior leaders admit that the whole Congress party in Goa became power-oriented. What became more important for them was how they could grab power. It became MLA-centric. Also they point out that each Congress MLA had the capacity to blackmail the party over minor difference between the Ruling party and Opposition.
When this thought was put before the AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh, he did admit that the party had become power-centric, hastening to add, that they were indeed in the process of strengthening the party and that was the reason they had started the membership drive.
The Assembly elections were a rout as all the chickens literally came home to roost. After the elections the party structure was in a total mess. And there was literally no Congress leader who did not have any negative baggage given the free for all that was witnessed in the last 3 years of the Digambar Kamat–led government.
The Lok Sabha elections betrayed that the paralysis that had griped the State Congress akin to that of the National Congress. Not having learnt any lessons the national party organization got drubbed nationwide. The BJP thus won both in Goa and at the all India level. However, what was shocking was that even in South Goa there were nobody to man the booths and the election campaign had to be literally outsourced to former Independent candidate Vijai Sardesai.
This situation has so resulted since in almost all constituencies the power was controlled by the Congress MLA or a former MLA and he kept tight control over the party organization and did not allow a second generation of leaders to emerge and appropriated the party organization in his constituency.
This has not changed even after the twin drubbings that the party has received in the Assembly and the Lok Sabha elections.
If that happens, the big question which hangs over the Congress is why will new blood enter the party?
Especially given that the Congress has these veteran four and five-time MLAs who even as they have aged have huge resources and as the allegations go, money to ensure that they get the party tickets. This is a major hindrance for young people to come into the party as they see no future in the party, except becoming sycophants – something that today’s youth are not very comfortable doing. And without fresh blood there is no chance of reviving the party.
So even though the intentions and the observations at the Shibir are spot on, it is the implementation that will take a lot of doing. According to analysts and insiders, this will be impossible unless the party decides that it will take party cadres to control elections and not just put out the wand of winnability and wave in front of the cadres and instead concentrate on giving talented people a chance and build the party infrastructure constituency by constituency, consciously independent of MLAs or older leaders even as they take the established leaders along.
