Defending Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, while conceding that the party must engage in introspection, P. Chidambaram, former Home Minister, said the fundamental problem the Congress faced was an organisational crisis rather than one related to leadership.
He suggested that collective leadership was the way ahead for the party, speaking at the release of his book Fearless in Opposition: Power and Accountability in the city on Saturday.
“Over the last two decades, the party organisation has weakened. Organisationally, BJP and RSS, are today what the Congress was in the 1950s and 1960s. What the Congress needs is an alternate plank or a counter narrative to the Hindutva narrative and a matching organisation by the next round of elections,” he said.
Mr. Chidambaram said that the next round of State elections in Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, pitted Congress against the BJP with no regional players, except in Karnataka, and its outcome would be crucial for the party on deciding the road ahead.
Arguing that post-socialism, Congress was not bound by any ideology, while Communist parties and BJP had strong ideological planks, Mr. Chidambaram said while he was not convinced that globalisation can be turned into an ideology, the idea of a modern, democratic State based on pluralistic values had the potential to be an alternate plank to counter Hindutva.
Alleging that the Union government missed an opportunity to bring in a second version of the National Judicial Appointments Committee (NJAC), he suggested that the collegium remain the only authority to propose the names of judges, while NJAC should be empowered to vet the proposed names, essentially working as a review authority. He accused the Modi-led government of sweeping away the real issues facing the country and instead bringing to the fore issues that stoke fear, creating an environment of fear in the country.
Rajeev Gowda, MP, Rajya Sabha, Aditya Sondhi, additional advocate general of the State, and Dr. Richard Rego S.J., Director, Research Centre, Department of Communication, St. Joseph’s College, were present on the occasion.