Congress, the happy corporate: Part-II

Party members want the PM's head to roll, but hesistate to speak out against those responsible for its drubbing in the assembly polls

There is a long and storied history of happy corporates with highly-concentrated power centres, poor transparency and absence of accountability and fairness principles. These attributes have, in majority of the cases, led to the ultimate decline of the happy corporate. The Congress Party is no different.

In organisations with highly concentrated power centres, the rank and file always want to appease the power centre even if it is done at the cost of the organisation itself. The power centre becomes more important than the organisation. The appeasement policy obfuscates knowledge and rationale. Either one toes the line of the power centre or he is at liberty to move out of the organisation. There is no scope for dissent.

This is exactly what is being witnessed in the Congress Party. None other but the Prime Minister himself amplified this. In the recent press conference he made it clear that he is not in the running for another term as the Prime Minister and also made a weak pitch for Rahul as the Prime Ministerial candidate. In fact, the PM was the last among the senior Congress leaders who voiced this support. Immediately after the recent drubbing at the hands of the AAP and the BJP most Congress leaders have sought refuge in “blame the leader and so change the leader” campaign and have started baying for Manmohan Singh's blood. Whereas the truth is that the Prime Minister hardly led the Congress in the state elections and it was more of Rahul and Sonia who were the real leaders of the Congress and campaigned with full vigour.

Any Congressman who is even slightly seized of the ground realities would have spoken out against the leaders who spearheaded the campaign and were responsible for the disaster.  But none did. why? because it would disturb the happy atmosphere in the party and that is not permitted in a happy corporate.

The recent election results were an excellent opportunity for the Congress party to begin the transformation from a happy corporate to a knowledge corporate. Instead of seizing this opportunity, the party seems to be continuing to perpetrate the happy culture. In its next move, the rank and file of the happy corporate is eagerly waiting the launch of a Rs 500 crore-advertisement campaign to showcase achievement of the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate (?) Rahul Gandhi.

It seems Congress eternally wants to remain a happy corporate.