Edit: After Scindia

for the second time in two years, the congress party has lost a prominent young leader to a tragic accident. last summer, following a routine visit to his parliamentary constituency in rajasthan, the promising political career of party leader rajesh pilot was cut short in a fatal mishap on the road. last sunday, it was an ill-fated plane ride to the venue of a party rally in up which abruptly ended the life of madhavrao scindia.for the past many years, the scion of the erstwhile royal family of gwalior was regarded by many as the unofficial second-in-command in the party. apart from being one of the party's longest serving members in parliament, scindia was party president sonia gandhi's deputy in the lok sabha a choice that was widely interpreted to mean that he enjoyed the confidence and trust of the party leader. in a polity where the articulate middle class is increasingly wielding an influence far beyond its numbers, the importance of scindia as a media-savvy leader with an elite educational background, not to mention a relatively clean public image, could hardly be denied. add to that the fact that scindia had a reasonable mass base in a party increasingly run by backroom operators whose only claim to political fame is their proximity to the congress' first family and one gets a fair idea of the former maharaja's standing in the eyes of the party rank and file. yet there is a danger that grief-stricken congressmen will, very likely, exaggerate the political void left in the wake of its youthful leader's sudden death. this was already reflected in television interviews conducted in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy in which many congressmen described madhavrao's death as the cruel hand of fate intervening in the party's fortunes. the larger political message which arises from the death of scindia is that the congress party of today can no longer, in the normal course of things, hope to produce and nurture a leadership of sufficient depth and mass appeal. the overweening presence of the gandhi family in the recent history of the party has inevitably given rise to a sycophantic organisational culture which puts little premium on qualities of independent thinking and inner party democracy. this not only explains the dramatic rise to power of successive congress leaders, based on nothing more than a membership of the gandhi family, but also why leaders such as pilot and scindia are so rare to find. it will further the interests of the party as much as the cause of democracy in this country, if the congress were to begin to reflect on this grave challenge facing the party. in one of his last media interviews, madhavrao scindia had spoken of how once a (political) vacuum is created it is always filled by a return to the political process, the "nature of which will depend on the developments in its aftermath". mourning congress members will have paid the departed soul a fitting tribute if they internalised this simple message in the specific context of the impending crisis of leadership in the party.