Letters: Business model for Cong

This refers to the column "The forgotten party" (February 14). In business, including those owned by families, a successful organisation, when facing a decline, inducts an outsider to head and revive it. It is time Congress president Sonia Gandhi looked beyond family and followed this corporate practice. Her 10-year long efforts to prop up her son Rahul Gandhi as a mass leader have failed. Rahul doesn't have the stamina, skills or aptitude for politics.

In choosing her successor, she should prefer merit to loyalty, give the nominee full autonomy and task him/her to reshape the party in a given time frame. She should avoid the mistakes she made while choosing Manmohan Singh to head the United Progressive Alliance government. He was a capable person but too loyal to oppose her detrimental dictates. Her frequent meddling with government policies did not bring out the best of him.

Gandhi should replace the culture of sycophancy with fear-free and frank communication. She should be more accessible to partymen at all levels instead of depending on selective feedback.

Yes, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has become a greater threat to the Congress than the Bharatiya Janata Party. However, Gandhi can turn it into an opportunity because, like AAP, the Congress is ideologically closer to people's expectations and has already got a nationwide organisation and followers.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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