While there is a saying that success has many fathers but failure has one mother, the Congress has credited the victory to the enterprise of its young leader Rahul Gandhi. Senior Congress leader CP Joshi, in charge of party affairs in Bihar, has already declared that the feeling of the Congress workers was that Rahul Gandhi should take over the reins now. There are other senior leaders like A.K. Antony who have joined the chorus and many more voices will emerge now that the Congress is looking up in the Hindi belt. The sycophants are now claiming that while Nitish Kumar may be the architect of the Grand Alliance victory it was Rahul Gandhi who was the catalyst of the alliance. What they mean is that while the RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav was dilly- dallying to make up his mind and Nitish Kumar reached the end of his patience waiting for his nod, it was Rahul’s efforts to move towards Nitish which more or less forced Lalu to fall in line.

There is no doubt that the Congress supporters were waiting for an opportune time to anoint their leader as the party chief and that time seems to have come now. The good showing in Bihar is the first in a long time, in fact after the party winning Karnataka assembly poll in 2013. There is no point in waiting any longer as his apprenticeship has had a long gestation period

So there is no time like the present time. First of all, the morale of the party workers is up now after this creditable victory although Congress was the junior partner in the Grand Alliance. Even senior Congressmen had said privately that the 41 seats allotted to them in the Grand alliance was much more than their proportionate strength in Bihar. The victory is all the more important because it has happened in Bihar where the party has lost primacy since 1990.

Secondly while there were questions about the dynasty, Bihar has proved that Gandhis are still important and a uniting factor. The third is that the older generation which had been stalling Rahul Gandhi’s elevation so far will have no further excuses now as the victory is credited to Rahul’s strategy. Fourthly, the domino effect will be felt in the next year’s elections to five states – West Bengal, Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The Congress is currently ruling in Karnataka and Assam. While the party had lost the government for the past four decades in West Bengal, in Tamil Nadu it will be fifty years since it saw the Secretariat.

Although the Congress has been riding with either DMK or the AIADMK, neither had allowed the Congress as a coalition partner in the state government.

However, one thing the party has to decide is that if it continues to go for a coalition in the states, it has to give up its hopes of primacy for now. The Bihar results have shown that a viable anti-BJP front could defeat the BJP with the Congress as a catalyst but the Congress may not be the fulcrum of it. So the party has to take a conscious decision on this point.

Moreover, the Bihar victory has shown that going it alone is not a viable option for the Congress any more. Rahul Gandhi’s experiment on this had failed and now the party has no other option than to go for a credible alliance with regional parties or perish. The Congress will have to admit to itself that it is not a dominant force any more.

At least two chief ministers – Nitish Kumar and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee are waiting to lead the anti BJP front. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who stopped the Modi rath in Delhi in February this year is not far behind although he does not have the same stature as the toher two. Nitish is the front runner as he is acceptable to the Left parties also.

It is all very well to credit Rahul with the victory but he has huge responsibilities if he takes over now. The first is to maintain the momentum created by this win until at least next years’ Assembly polls. For this he needs to be more accessible to the party workers. The second is to revitalise the party and build it at the gross root levels. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has hinted some time ago that Rahul Gandhi was preparing to take over the party along with his team. His major task is to build the second line leaders in the party and also in the states which he has been talking about for long. Although Rahul had put his handpicked PCC presidents in several states like Bihar, UP, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. Most of them have not come up to the expectation. Thirdly, he should try to have a mix of both old guard and the new blood so that both have their relevance.

Time is of essence and Rahul should the seize the initiative and lead from the front when the party’s mood is upbeat. Otherwise it will be one more missed opportunity. (IPA Service)