Ramachandra Guha: What result I’m wishing for in next year’s election

Some months before the 2009 general elections, I wrote an essay for a Delhi magazine outlining a wish-list of four things I hoped for to reinvigorate the democratic process in India.

First, I wanted “a Congress that is not wholly beholden to the dynasty”. Second, I wished for a Bharatiya Janata Party that distanced itself from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its idea of a Hindu rashtra. Third, I asked for “a united and reform-oriented Left” that would eschew violence altogether while also abandoning its faith in state control of the economy. Finally, I wished for the creation of a new party altogether, this “based on the aspirations of the expanding middle class”, a party that would “be open to all regardless of caste or religion, and promote policies that are likewise not oriented to a particular sect or ethnic group”.

Fourteen years and three general elections later, it is humbling to recall this wish-list and to see how far it still is from realisation. Though a non-Gandhi is at last the president of the Congress, the party is still firmly controlled by that family. Indeed, no sooner was Mallikarjun Kharge made Congress president that he visited the Bharat Jodo Yatra and said that...

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