IIPM Mumbai Campus
Rebels with a pause
In political circles, the Congress party is often referred to as “the big house”. This is because politicians and workers who leave tend to return to its fold in due course after testing the waters outside. It is not that other parties don't have such examples. They do. But they are few and far between. People like Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Madan Lal Khurana and Amar Singh have learned at their own expense that individuals are never bigger than an organisation. But as far as exceptions are concerned, there are a few in the Congress too. People like Chandrashekhar, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh in the past and Maninderjeet Singh Bitta in more recent times never returned to the party after deserting it.
There are some interesting names on this list. Ajit Jogi and K Karunakaran were expelled from the party, but were taken back to the fold. People like S Bangarappa has been in and out of the party so many times that he himself might have lost count.
So what is the reason behind this phenomenon? To start with, it appears that people lose their political standing when the defect from a big party. Congress, technically, means congregation of people, and that is what it has always proved to be. Now not everybody is like Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee, who have the money power and the political base respectively to launch and sustain an independent party. In fact, without these two factors, it is impossible to run a regional outfit. To put it in perspective, in 2007 alone, as many as six such regional outfits merged with the Congress because of “lack of funds”. Being foregone conclusions, these mergers did not make news.
The Congress budget runs into crores of rupees. At election time individual candidates are allocated huge sums. Election Commission guidelines are often flouted in ingenious ways. In fact, many candidates save money from this poll fund for completely private use. But look at the condition of regional parties. Their musclemen and local middlemen ask for exorbitant sums to manage votes. Failing to secure what they want, they threaten to transfer the votes to the official Congress candidate in lieu of money. The exasperated rebel candidate realises that life is easier under the umbrella of a big party.
Talk to any politician about this and they will pour their hearts out. Subramaniam Swamy still holds the post of the president of the Janata Party, but the party itself is now in a mummified state. Swamy has lost his status as a political leader of import; he is at best an “anarchist” with some nuisance value. People like P Chidambaram and K Karunakaran were smart enough to return to the party fold before things got out of hand.
Another question that intrigues all is, why does the Congress face so many rebellions and defections? Insiders say the primary reason is the lack of communication between the high command and the leaders. People like Natwar Singh, Arjun Singh, Sheila Dikshit and Kedar Nath Singh had differences over the election of PV Narasimha Rao as party president. They supported the one-man one-post norm, which didn't go down well with the then PM. The Gandhi family was out of politics at that juncture and Rao was at the helm of affairs. Well-wishers wanted Sonia Gandhi to come into active politics and thus raised the one-man one-post issue. They wanted Sonia to be president of the party if Rao was to keep the post of the Prime Minister. The above-mentioned quartet rebelled during the Surajkund general meeting and just after that the 'Tiwari Congress' came into being.
Tiwari Congress was an interesting case. Sonia had started giving signals that she might join active politics after all. At the Tiwari Congress's office adjoining New Delhi's Le Meridien Hotel, Narain Dutt Tiwari used to discreetly keep tabs on Sonia's plans. Even veteran journalists covering the Congress were unaware of the real reason behind this outfit. They only got wind of it when they saw Janardhan Dwivedi, considered close to Sonia, coming out of Arjun Singh's house though the latter had left the party. This rebellion was clearly not against the Gandhi-Nehru family. Not surprisingly, this outfit merged with the mother party following Sonia's entry into active politics.
It was much later that Arjun Singh and Natwar Singh fell out with the party high command. Arjun Singh is an outspoken man. Insiders say he was too forthright a leader to remain subdued for too long. Natwar Singh, on the other hand, was let down by his son's involvement in the Volcker oil-for-food scandal.
Old timers will tell you that as far as rebellions in the Congress are concerned, it was never against the high command. Talking to TSI, Bhishm Narain Singh says, “From Debkanta Barooah to Siddhartha Shankar Ray, each one of them advised Indiraji to proclaim Emergency. Because of this wrong advice, a lot of people left the Congress. This weakened the party. Our biggest enemy is in-fighting and back-stabbing.”
Had conflict with the high command been the reason for desertion, many of the rebels would not have returned to the Congress. People like Ambika Soni, Pranab Mukherjee, AK Antony and Chidambaram would have severed all links with the party once they had turned their backs on it. The fact that Agatha Sangma is a junior minister in the Cabinet also confirms that the high command doesn't keep grudges. The party's problem is that the "coterie" gives dubious advice to the high command. For example, Natwar Singh was done in by Sonia's political adviser Ahmad Patel. The latter was reportedly unhappy with Natwar's direct access to Sonia.
Take the case of Jagan. A party bigwig from Andhra Pradesh who was promoting his aides convinced the party that Jagan's defection would not harm the party's prospects. Rahul Gandhi was not sure. So he sent a young general secretary to analyse the situation. That office-bearer was coerced by the big gun to give the same input. However, he gave the actual report saying that Jagan's departure would hurt the party in the next polls and that Jagan is of the same temperament as his father.
The list of people who left the Congress because of “neglect”, “insult”, “ego clashes” and otherwise is long. The first big name is that of K Kamraj, who was the original kingmaker. Kamraj was instrumental in getting Lal Bahadur Shastri the post of PM. It was only after his death that Indira Gandhi overcame the so-called Syndicate to become PM. Around the same time and after, Chandrashekhar, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh left the party never to return. They formed their own outfits and became political heavyweights in their own right.
Analysts might add here that since the aforementioned did not strictly adhere to the “Congress ideology”, they left the party. Similarly in February 1977, Babu Jagjivan Ram left the Congress and formed Congress for Democracy. Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and erstwhile Orissa CM Nandani Satpathy joined his ranks. The same year, Karnataka's Devraj Urs tried to split the Congress. He was initially backed by AK Antony, Sharad Pawar, Ambika Soni, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, Oomen Chandi and PC Chako, but all of them returned to the Congress soon enough.
Antony, meanwhile, formed the Regional Congress (A), which was rechristened Indian Congress (S) with the inclusion of Sharad Pawar. However, the party merged with the Congress in 1981. In 1994, Tiwari Congress and Bangarappa's Karnataka Congress merged with the Congress. Bangarappa, to give him his due, revolted again and formed Karnataka Vikas Party but rejoined after much cajoling. But he again upped and quit and joined Samajwadi Party only to return when reality sunk in.
It was during the same year that GK Moopanar's Tamil Manila Congress, Madhavrao Scindhia's Madhya Pradesh Vikas Party and Gegong Apang's Regional Arunachal Congress also merged with the Congress.
Following an analysis of the defeats the party has faced in recent elections, a high-power committee of the Congress has recommended that it should actively try to woo back the sidelined old warhorses in a bid to reclaim its lost impetus. After all, as recent political history has repeatedly shown, Congress rebels are pretty prone to changing their anti-party stance with just a bit of coaxing.
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Rebels with a pause
In political circles, the Congress party is often referred to as “the big house”. This is because politicians and workers who leave tend to return to its fold in due course after testing the waters outside. It is not that other parties don't have such examples. They do. But they are few and far between. People like Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Madan Lal Khurana and Amar Singh have learned at their own expense that individuals are never bigger than an organisation. But as far as exceptions are concerned, there are a few in the Congress too. People like Chandrashekhar, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh in the past and Maninderjeet Singh Bitta in more recent times never returned to the party after deserting it.
There are some interesting names on this list. Ajit Jogi and K Karunakaran were expelled from the party, but were taken back to the fold. People like S Bangarappa has been in and out of the party so many times that he himself might have lost count.
So what is the reason behind this phenomenon? To start with, it appears that people lose their political standing when the defect from a big party. Congress, technically, means congregation of people, and that is what it has always proved to be. Now not everybody is like Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee, who have the money power and the political base respectively to launch and sustain an independent party. In fact, without these two factors, it is impossible to run a regional outfit. To put it in perspective, in 2007 alone, as many as six such regional outfits merged with the Congress because of “lack of funds”. Being foregone conclusions, these mergers did not make news.
The Congress budget runs into crores of rupees. At election time individual candidates are allocated huge sums. Election Commission guidelines are often flouted in ingenious ways. In fact, many candidates save money from this poll fund for completely private use. But look at the condition of regional parties. Their musclemen and local middlemen ask for exorbitant sums to manage votes. Failing to secure what they want, they threaten to transfer the votes to the official Congress candidate in lieu of money. The exasperated rebel candidate realises that life is easier under the umbrella of a big party.
Talk to any politician about this and they will pour their hearts out. Subramaniam Swamy still holds the post of the president of the Janata Party, but the party itself is now in a mummified state. Swamy has lost his status as a political leader of import; he is at best an “anarchist” with some nuisance value. People like P Chidambaram and K Karunakaran were smart enough to return to the party fold before things got out of hand.
Another question that intrigues all is, why does the Congress face so many rebellions and defections? Insiders say the primary reason is the lack of communication between the high command and the leaders. People like Natwar Singh, Arjun Singh, Sheila Dikshit and Kedar Nath Singh had differences over the election of PV Narasimha Rao as party president. They supported the one-man one-post norm, which didn't go down well with the then PM. The Gandhi family was out of politics at that juncture and Rao was at the helm of affairs. Well-wishers wanted Sonia Gandhi to come into active politics and thus raised the one-man one-post issue. They wanted Sonia to be president of the party if Rao was to keep the post of the Prime Minister. The above-mentioned quartet rebelled during the Surajkund general meeting and just after that the 'Tiwari Congress' came into being.
Tiwari Congress was an interesting case. Sonia had started giving signals that she might join active politics after all. At the Tiwari Congress's office adjoining New Delhi's Le Meridien Hotel, Narain Dutt Tiwari used to discreetly keep tabs on Sonia's plans. Even veteran journalists covering the Congress were unaware of the real reason behind this outfit. They only got wind of it when they saw Janardhan Dwivedi, considered close to Sonia, coming out of Arjun Singh's house though the latter had left the party. This rebellion was clearly not against the Gandhi-Nehru family. Not surprisingly, this outfit merged with the mother party following Sonia's entry into active politics.
It was much later that Arjun Singh and Natwar Singh fell out with the party high command. Arjun Singh is an outspoken man. Insiders say he was too forthright a leader to remain subdued for too long. Natwar Singh, on the other hand, was let down by his son's involvement in the Volcker oil-for-food scandal.
Old timers will tell you that as far as rebellions in the Congress are concerned, it was never against the high command. Talking to TSI, Bhishm Narain Singh says, “From Debkanta Barooah to Siddhartha Shankar Ray, each one of them advised Indiraji to proclaim Emergency. Because of this wrong advice, a lot of people left the Congress. This weakened the party. Our biggest enemy is in-fighting and back-stabbing.”
Had conflict with the high command been the reason for desertion, many of the rebels would not have returned to the Congress. People like Ambika Soni, Pranab Mukherjee, AK Antony and Chidambaram would have severed all links with the party once they had turned their backs on it. The fact that Agatha Sangma is a junior minister in the Cabinet also confirms that the high command doesn't keep grudges. The party's problem is that the "coterie" gives dubious advice to the high command. For example, Natwar Singh was done in by Sonia's political adviser Ahmad Patel. The latter was reportedly unhappy with Natwar's direct access to Sonia.
Take the case of Jagan. A party bigwig from Andhra Pradesh who was promoting his aides convinced the party that Jagan's defection would not harm the party's prospects. Rahul Gandhi was not sure. So he sent a young general secretary to analyse the situation. That office-bearer was coerced by the big gun to give the same input. However, he gave the actual report saying that Jagan's departure would hurt the party in the next polls and that Jagan is of the same temperament as his father.
The list of people who left the Congress because of “neglect”, “insult”, “ego clashes” and otherwise is long. The first big name is that of K Kamraj, who was the original kingmaker. Kamraj was instrumental in getting Lal Bahadur Shastri the post of PM. It was only after his death that Indira Gandhi overcame the so-called Syndicate to become PM. Around the same time and after, Chandrashekhar, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh left the party never to return. They formed their own outfits and became political heavyweights in their own right.
Analysts might add here that since the aforementioned did not strictly adhere to the “Congress ideology”, they left the party. Similarly in February 1977, Babu Jagjivan Ram left the Congress and formed Congress for Democracy. Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and erstwhile Orissa CM Nandani Satpathy joined his ranks. The same year, Karnataka's Devraj Urs tried to split the Congress. He was initially backed by AK Antony, Sharad Pawar, Ambika Soni, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, Oomen Chandi and PC Chako, but all of them returned to the Congress soon enough.
Antony, meanwhile, formed the Regional Congress (A), which was rechristened Indian Congress (S) with the inclusion of Sharad Pawar. However, the party merged with the Congress in 1981. In 1994, Tiwari Congress and Bangarappa's Karnataka Congress merged with the Congress. Bangarappa, to give him his due, revolted again and formed Karnataka Vikas Party but rejoined after much cajoling. But he again upped and quit and joined Samajwadi Party only to return when reality sunk in.
It was during the same year that GK Moopanar's Tamil Manila Congress, Madhavrao Scindhia's Madhya Pradesh Vikas Party and Gegong Apang's Regional Arunachal Congress also merged with the Congress.
Following an analysis of the defeats the party has faced in recent elections, a high-power committee of the Congress has recommended that it should actively try to woo back the sidelined old warhorses in a bid to reclaim its lost impetus. After all, as recent political history has repeatedly shown, Congress rebels are pretty prone to changing their anti-party stance with just a bit of coaxing.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri Dean Business School IIPM
IIPM Excom Prof Rajita Chaudhuri
Kapil Sibal's voters want Jan Lokpal, not Government-proposed Lokpal Bill
IIPM Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri on For Salman Khurshid, it is a big challenge ahead; and I personally look forward to a revolutionary couple of years ahead!
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