In fact, except for its unflinching faith in liberal democracy and its past sacrifices for the cause of freedom, everything is wrong with NC. The party is more like a loose bunch of individuals each headed his own way, than a cohesive entity of people with common political and organizational goals. Whether through statute or practice, the party has never been able to check the selfish acts of leaders that were clearly against the larger and long-term party interests. Be it late Girija Prasad Koirala’s signing of accords of suicidal consequences with the Maoists or Deuba’s decision to hold mid-term polls back in 2002, at a time the party had a comfortable majority in the parliament, are cases in point. Powerful people split and reunite the party as and when their interests suit.
Some powerful leaders and families have made fortunes while the party office cannot even pay cleaner’s salary and utility bills on the face of dwindling revenues. Leaders are inept and power-hungry; in fact, none of the so-called second generation leaders possesses the magnanimity and the acumen needed to lead (and revive) a big political party as divided and disorganized as NC. Bereft of any schooling and political mobilization, cadres are undisciplined, directionless, unproductive, unmotivated, and without PR skills and sense of collectivism—the very foundations of a functioning political organization. Moreover, NC general conventions are mere formalities with little or no serious business.
Compared to NC, both the (moderate) CPN-UML and hardliner (UCPN-Maoist) have sounder organizational structure, more efficient management, better strategies, better sources and use of funds, relatively better inner-party democracy, better information and social network, superior public relation skills and above all, they are well schooled, well mobilized and hard-working. However, their Marxist/Maoist ideologies are out of tune with modern times. In other words, they have all the characteristics of well-functioning parties, except that they happen to be on the wrong side of history. Hence, NC could have left the two far behind in the political race had it not been for its organizational and leadership failures.
NC direly needs institutional build-up, achieved through strengthening of the organization along with improvements in recruitment, training and mobilization of cadres. It should also look to groom a new brand of leaders that is capable of standing up to the challenges of the time, country and organization. This will no doubt be a long and uphill task which will demand vision, patience and hard work, and without much in return. After enjoying the comforts of power continuously for more than two decades, NC rank and file has no appetite for any such sacrifice.
NC, therefore, tend to dismiss constructive criticism and instead resort to easier, short-term solutions; for example, many NC ‘intellectuals’ believe that the party has lost to the communists because it switched, albeit unofficially, to neo-liberal policies from socialism, the founding principle of the party. Therefore, as a cure for the party’s ills, they prescribe NC returns to socialism, both in words and action.
Mouthing catchy slogans is far easier, and more attractive, than delivering on good governance or properly managing the affairs of huge political organization. However, as NC’s problems stem, not from political correctness but its deficiencies in capacity building, socialism is not the cure for its ills. NC leaders should try to breathe new life into its dysfunctional organization rather than insist on flogging the dead horse of a failed ideology. Right policies, organizational/managerial efficiency and prudent and optimal use of resources will result in the growth and development of the party, not straitjacket political doctrines.
The Maoists almost had a stranglehold in rural areas during the insurgency. Eventually, it would go on to lose its important constituencies in Tarai strongholds. And it had already lost most of the support of minorities and marginalized communities—once the party’s support base—to ethno-lingual parties/groups and Maoists. Its popular vote shrunk to 22 percent in the Constituent Assembly polls as against 33- and 37-percent achieved during the last parliamentary elections. If NC leaders keep parroting socialism but ignore the more vital issues of nation and institution building, they are likely to lose the educated and the middle class as well, their most prized support group.
Changing with the times, the majority of democratic socialists over the world have adopted market economy and abandoned socialism, which have benefited both the parties and the countries. India—our neighbor with similar socioeconomic settings as Nepal—is a living example of this; it is the neo-liberal policies of the erstwhile socialist Indian National Congress which have helped reap an average annual growth of 8 percent over last so many years. This is in sharp contrast to the stagnated growth of the ‘socialist’ Nehru-Indira era. In our country as well, neo-liberal policies helped achieve, for some years in a row, growth rate of around 5 percent during the 1990s. But NC could neither sustain such growths thanks to constant in-fighting and the failure to strengthen its weak organizational capabilities and poor public relation image.
Although the party has been constantly criticized by the socialist/leftist lobbies both inside and outside NC as anti-poor, NC’s neo-liberal measures, if we go by the results, never harmed the poor and the downtrodden. No study/survey so far supports this claim. Neo-liberalism doesn’t breed poverty; to the contrary, it has reduced poverty everywhere through increased production and wealth creation.
It is a different matter altogether that the wealth created may not have fully reached the needier ones, thus widening the gap between the rich and the poor. In that case, instead of blaming neo-liberalization for the disparity, our leftist leaders, who have themselves been in power several times, should rather have worked at empowerment and capacity building of the poor, besides adopting appropriate redistributive measures.
There were no big policy, program or ideology related disputes to justify NC’s breakup in 2001. The split was a result of protracted power struggles between top leaders and their cronies/relatives. Although the two Congress chose to reunite some four years ago in delayed response to the growing Maoist threat, few NC people seem to have learnt any lessons from the big price they had to pay because of a divided house. For all practical purposes, they are as divided as they were during the 2001-2007 period; they are repeating the same mistakes and overlooking the same shortcomings.
Although time is on the side of democracy and market economy, which means it’s on the side of NC and not that of the communists, the latter do possess the necessary organizational capabilities to outplay NC in the game of realpolitik. They also know how to benefit from the weaknesses of NC. Hence it is in NC’s best interest to start working on removing the organizational and leadership shortcomings than resort to outdated ideologies to prop up a divided house.
jeevan1952@hotmail.com
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