PM Modi schools Rahul Gandhi with Harvard study on Congress decline; What's it all about?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reply to the President's address in the Lower House of the Parliament was full of veiled attacks on the opposition, especially the Congress after they launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government over the issue pertaining to the Adani Group.

Addressing the Lok Sabha, PM Modi shut down Rahul Gandhi over his request for a study on the 'magical' rise in the business fortunes of industrialist Gautam Adani under the incumbent government and reminded him of another important study by Harvard Business School- 'In the Name of Democracy? The Rise and Decline of India's Congress Party'. 

But what is 'The Rise and Decline of India's Congress Party'?

'The Rise and Decline of India's Congress Party' is a report by the Harvard Business School published in 2016, and revised in April 2020. This 30-page-long study covers India's journey since 1950, when the country got its own Constitution, with a special focus on 'Nehru's Congress'.

In the study, the top to the bottom structure of Congress was explained, with political scientist Myron Weiner's opinion that the 'transition from a nationalist movement to a political party' contributed to its 'adaptive capacity'. However, the document noted, "Congress leaders were concerned, above all else, with winning elections. They did whatever was necessary to adapt to local power structures across India. The party accommodated factions, castes, linguistic groups, and economic interests, making it 'very much the party of peasant proprietors in the countryside and of businessmen in the towns and cities'.”

In the study, it has been pointed out how Nehru and Ambedkar wanted to replace personal laws with a Uniform Civil Code that applied equally to all citizens but religious leaders and their sympathisers within Congress opposed such reforms. What was referred to as a 'compromise', the document noted how despite the Special Marriage Act of 1954 allowed citizens to marry, divorce, and inherit land based on civil law, the religious groups were permitted to continue using their own personal laws. The document further noted that it 'reinforced patriarchy and failed to protect women from discrimination'. 

"The politics of patronage—the distribution of benefits in exchange for votes—was at the heart of Congress Party rule," alleged the study. 

The study also covered how the syndicate moved swiftly to install Lal Bahadur Shastri as Prime Minister after Nehru’s death in 1964. And how when Shastri died in 1966, they installed Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, "based on the assumption that she too could be made subservient to state-level leadership 95 They had miscalculated."

Under the header- 'Development, Democracy and Discontent'-- discussed thereafter, the State License Permit Raj, the Emergency under Indira Gandhi, and the Pro-Business turn under Rajiv Gandhi, followed by the subsequent, fall of Congress and rise of BJP were talked about.