Having forced the election, the party seems least prepared to face it. For the first time since independence, it goes to the polls without a recognisable leader or slogan.

By Swapan Dasgupta and Sumit Mitra

India is an old nation with a young population, a population that can barely remember the golden age of the 112-year-old Indian National Congress. At best familiar with the "sympathy" election of 1984 that led to the Congress winning its most resounding mandate in history, India's post-Midnight's Children generation may well be forgiven for viewing the intense nervousness that prevails in India's Grand Old Party as a natural occurrence.

It is, however, a nervousness with a monumental difference. In the 50 years since Independence, the Congress has become accustomed to both winning and losing elections. In 1957, a communist-led alliance in Kerala with E.M.S. Namboodiripad at its head inflicted the first defeat on the Congress in a state election; and two decades later, the Congress was trounced in a Lok Sabha election. Since 1977, India has witnessed a see-saw electoral battle between the Congress and non-Congress formations. The contest for the 12th Lok Sabha next February should, ideally, be no different. Except in one important respect: for the first time, India's largest national party goes into battle without a recognisable face to lead it.

That, of course, is putting things charitably. "I am the party president and the election will be fought under my leadership," announced All India Congress Committee (AICC) President Sitaram Kesri last week. "I may not be a great leader but I am a humble worker and the Congress workers identify with me." Kesri fooled no one. For, though the Congress has in the past gone into elections with different parliamentary party and organisational heads -- K. Kamaraj was president in 1967, Jagjivan Ram in 1971 and S.D. Sharma in 1977 -- it is perhaps for the first time that even Congressmen are not clear about who will lead the government if the party gets the mandate.

Kesri is -- to be fair to him -- no less photogenic or linguistically gifted than K. Kamaraj. The difference, however, is that Kamaraj was highly respected by his partymen, to the extent that Central ministers relinquished office at his word. Kesri's writ does not run even in the Congress Working Committee (CWC), most of whose members were handpicked by him. Elsewhere, many party leaders are quite brazen in defying the Congress president. The rebel from West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, had set the tone as early as August when, at the AICC session in Calcutta, she referred to the party chief as chuncho, loosely but not inappropriately translated as a bandicoot. Last week, when she threatened to launch a regional party, a visibly unnerved Kesri despatched party General Secretary Oscar Fernandes to Calcutta to placate her. The emissary arrived in the city, only to find that Banerjee did not even want to see him. She finally agreed, but in the presence of hundreds of her supporters, a battery of journalists and scores of curious onlookers.

Banerjee may be the most visible symbol of the groundswell against Kesri. Other party leaders convey the same message without being so blatant. On December 12, the CWC met in Delhi for over four hours. In attendance, besides the elected members, were Congress chief ministers and heads of legislature party units of all states. During the meeting, Kesri sat mostly squirming in embarrassment as leader after leader made the familiar request that Sonia head the campaign. Not one of them mentioned their party chief's name even once. As one CWC member later said: "Congress ko ek naya chehra chahiye (the Congress needs a new face)". In fact, after the meeting, several members gathered informally and their discussion centred on ways of keeping the party chief away from most constituencies and dissuading him from appearing on television. They were perhaps alluding to the after-effects of Kesri's disastrous utterances on the box in the recent past.

The same day, the socialite wife of a former party MP was heard telling her friends at a dinner: "I have told my husband that if you put Kesri on the posters, even my children and I will not vote for you." It is not known if the wives of CWC members too held out similar threats, but the fact that the same night the party announced that its posters would sport pictures of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi seemed to suggest that they had.

The leadership vacuum in the Congress is only one of a series of problems confronting the party. Others include:

• Absence of a clear-cut election issue: Kesri first announced that secularism would be the party's main plank. A few days later, he passed the task of determining campaign issues to the Manifesto Committee. Perhaps he realised that the secularism plank could wobble against the UF's counter-accusation that the party passed on the advantage to the BJP.
• Absence of a strong anti-incumbency wave: The 17-month UF rule was too short to generate such a wave. Also, having supported the UF, the Congress has conceded virtually the entire opposition space to the BJP.
• Paucity of young leaders: The Congress is just not appealing to younger voters. A state unit president confessed that while the party's old stock of election managers was either ageing or dying, there were few people at the block level who enjoyed nodding acquaintance with voters in the 18-30 age group. These voters are increasingly crowding out the older generation from the polling booths.

The dwarfing of the Congress has been so marked that BJP leader Pramod Mahajan never fails to draw a lusty cheer when he describes the Congress' existential crisis: "There was a time when the leader of the Congress spoke and the world listened; then, there was a time the country listened; then, at least the party listened; now, if the Congress leader speaks, his own party heckles him." Perhaps, Mahajan's final flourish is equally relevant for the United Front (UF) whose own prime minister was heckled in Parliament. But the UF at least has the benefit of satraps like N. Chandrababu Naidu, M. Karunanidhi, Jyoti Basu and Mulayam Singh Yadav who are well known in their own states. But the Congress, as a centralised party with a definite command structure, has never depended on fragmented campaigns and has always required a leader with a recognisable face. Among the 94 names recommended by the party's Central Campaign Committee to campaign for Congress candidates, there is no one who can attract significant crowds in the metros, not to speak of rural areas and one-horse towns. Madhavrao Scindia, Arjun Singh, Digvijay Singh, K.Vijayabhaskara Reddy, A.K. Antony, J.B. Patnaik and Sharad Pawar have limited spheres of influence, although each of them has more mass appeal than Kesri. Even P.A. Sangma from Meghalaya now has a wider appeal, thanks to his stint as Speaker. This perhaps explains the party's craving for Sonia, the one face that is guaranteed to draw crowds, at least for one election. So desperate are they that during Sonia's birthday celebrations last week, veteran Congressman H.K.L. Bhagat actually performed an incredible jig for TV cameras outside 10 Janpath.

If, however, Sonia fails to oblige, the party will be confronted with the problem of how to conduct a faceless election campaign. "Collective leadership" may be an idea that finds favour among the fractious UF, but it is a novelty to Congressmen. The party's experience has been that grave political issues are traditionally embodied through an individual, making India's parliamentary polls, in effect, a presidential contest. As early as 1953, author Nirad C. Chaudhuri described India as the "personal autocracy of Mr Nehru", a "plebiscitory dictatorship": "The only person who did not know that was Nehru himself, all else knew it." Indeed, amid the theorising over the "Congress system" and the post-facto disgust with the D.K. Barooah "Indira is India" remark, the extent to which the dominant party was also the leader's party has been glossed over.

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