On the land law, too, the Congress is showing a remarkable lack of foresight about the consequences of being seen as anti-industry. How hurtful such an image can be is evident from Mamata Banerjee’s plight in the matter of securing investments for West Bengal.

To woo industrialists, she first went to Mumbai where she was seen in Mukesh Ambani’s company, then she went to Singapore and now she will be visiting London with a delegation of 100-plus businessmen and bureaucrats. But, the fallout of this latest outing is unlikely to be any different from her earlier ventures, which produced nothing.

Ever since she evicted the Tatas from Singur in 2008 to stymie the Left Front government’s industrialization projects, the chief minister has been seen as anti-investment. The perception has also been strengthened by her opposition to the amendments of the land law proposed by the Narendra Modi government.

For the time being, the Congress may not be interested in attracting investment to the states where it is still in power, but a “national” party – although, in a way, all parties have become regional these days – cannot give the impression that it is against industrialization.

Yet, the stridency with which Rahul Gandhi is proclaiming his pro-farmer outlook and slamming the Modi government for being pro-business – suit-boot ki sarkar - cannot but make it appear that he is some kind of a narodnik, recalling the pre-communist, village-based revolutionary movement in Russia which shunned industries and wanted the country to comprise agrarian communities.

It is unlikely, however, that the Congress’s crowns prince has a rationale for his campaign except that he wants to scuttle Modi’s “Make in India” drive which aims at replicating the Chinese model of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub.

To achieve this objective, there is a need for acquiring land not only for industrial complexes, but also for infrastructure – roads, bridges, power plants and even helipads for company executives. But, none of this will be acceptable to those in the Congress and in parties like the Trinamool Congress who seem to prefer to keep India perpetually as a backward, agricultural state.

For the present, they probably believe that a pro-farmer attitude will fetch votes. But, it is patently a myopic outlook. What is evidently required is an economic vision which promotes growth via industrialization while ensuring that the interests of the cultivators are not harmed.

The latter objective cannot be achieved by keeping the peasants harnessed to their land for generations, leading to the fragmentation of holdings and declining productivity. Instead, the process of transition from farms to factories has to be encouraged, leaving only the owners of large plots which can be productively cultivated with tractors.

It is not surprising that at Rahul Gandhi’s first public meeting after his return from the 56-day sabbatical, the heir apparent was presented by Congressmen with a wooden plough, signifying a step backwards into an agricultural past, and not the model of a tractor lest it suggested a step forward into a future envisioned by his great grandfather when he said that “dams are the temples of modern India”.

As the dauphin’s one-liners during his brief interactions with the media show, he has no economic blueprint. Nor a political one, except that of disrupting parliament and indulging in what has been called spit-and-run tactics which can expose him to charges of defamation a la another knight on an off-white horse, Arvind Kejriwal.

Sonia Gandhi, too, is happy to endorse the tactics of stalling parliament without realizing that these have come to resemble the tantrums of poor losers. The absurdity of the mother-and-son duo seeking the resignations of a Union minister and two chief ministers, who have been accused of wrong-doing, before allowing a debate on their behaviour is obvious.

The Congress might have been able to score more effective political points if it had opted for a discussion and made the BJP squirm with the charges of impropriety and worse against the three. But, now, it is too late, for the delay provided by the holding of parliament to ransom has given the ruling party an opportunity to point to the skeletons in the Congress’s cupboard.

If it is now even-stevens where the BJP and the Congress are concerned, the reason is that the dowager queen and the crown prince are poor tacticians. Shashi Tharoor was the only MP, who gathered enough courage to break away from the servile courtiers to say that refusing to let Parliament function was not the best way to win friends and influence people.

But, Sonia Gandhi has become too used to the presence of fawning sycophants around for her to listen to a contrary voice. What she and her son do not seem to understand is that such arrogant feudal traits arouse derision rather than admiration in a democracy. The outcome for the Congress is that its hope of recovery will remain a distant dream. (IPA Service)