Rahul Gandhi has a dream of making the Congress great again. He is not in a hurry and willing to work for decades to revive the party as wants the party to become ideologically committed. He wants Congress Seva Dal to be a cadre-based out-fit and party’s answer to BJP’s RSS. Rahul Gandhi tried restructuring the party’s frontal organisations – the Seva dal, Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India (NSUI) – in his early days. After all, the Seva Dal was also founded in 1923 by Narayan Subarao Hardikar and therefore, the “RSS is two years junior to Seva Dal.” Its first chairman was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi also held the post.
Rahul Gandhi wants to revive the same spirit. But over the years, the Seva Dal may have taken a back seat and the party now wants to revive it through district units for major decision-making functions and strengthen cadre building. The likely change dates back to the system that was in place in the 1960s before the shift towards the AICC happened. While Congress may have been resorting to reviving and strengthening 750-odd DCCs to their political primacy, the lesson has been learnt at a big cost. It is, however, easier said than done as giving power to the DCCs will reverse the process of centralisation of power from AICC to DCCs. There were times when the DCCs writ used to run in selection of candidates and no national leader could veto their recommendations. This seems to be a mirage and one will have to wait and see the first trial of Rahul Gandhi’s latest balloon in the coming state Assembly polls in 2026.
