Create A New Congress

Another party with many GOP personnel but not Gandhis will be a better opposition option

- Pavan K Varma

A crisis has gripped the working of the world’s largest democracy: The absence of an effective opposition. Democracy works on the principle of accountability. There are many ways to ensure this, including checks and balances between the three principal wings of the polity – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. These safeguards have been written into the Constitution.

However, the Constitution cannot guarantee an opposition. Nowhere is it mentioned in the basic principles of the Constitution that there has to be an opposition. However, all genuine democracies function on the assumption that there will be an effective opposition. What happens if this assumption is not put to practice? A fatal inadequacy creeps into the ideological core of democratic functioning. The nation then is in very grave danger of ceasing to be democratic.

It follows, therefore, that if a cohesive and organised opposition does not exist, it must, like God, be created. But how? At the moment, Congress is the only party with a pan-Indian footprint. But the bitter truth is that under the Gandhis it is floundering. In parliamentary elections of 2014, the Congress got just 44 seats. In 2019, it made a paltry improvement to 52. Nor is it showing any signs of getting its act together.