Congress Leader Satheesan: Vision and Team-Building Matter More Than Administrative Experience

Administrative experience cannot be the criteria for choosing a leader, but the vision of the leader and his or her ability to build a team are important, senior Congress leader V D Satheesan said Wednesday. One of the three frontrunners for Kerala chief ministership after the Congress’s big victory in the state, the Leader of Opposition in the outgoing Assembly was answering a question at The Indian Express’s Idea Exchange session on whether someone like him who has never had any administration experience or been a minister should become a CM. “Administrative experience is not an issue. V S Achuthanandan (former Kerala CM and long-time CPI-M leader), what was his administrative experience ? When (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi became the CM (of Gujarat), what was his administrative experience? He was a party organiser, not even a senior parliamentarian,” Satheesan, widely credited with leading the Congress fight in the Assembly elections, said. The other contenders for the CM post, apart from Satheesan – a five-time MLA from Paravur – include K C Venugopal, Congress general secretary (organisation), and former Kerala chief of the Congress Ramesh Chennithala. “The vision of a leader is very important and the main thing is team building. Selecting the right people around, that shows your leadership,” Satheesan, 62, said. However, he added, the Congress has a “procedure” for selection of CM, which he said had already begun. “The high command will take a decision following the procedures,” Satheesan said, adding that discussions would be held with MLAs and their opinions taken, and reported to the party president. “Everything will be considered to make a decision.” About whether he would accept the decision of the high command, whoever it chooses, Satheesan said it was “a hypothetical question”. Talking about his own leadership, Satheesan said the “homework” started two years ahead of the elections. “We conducted a health conclave, an education conclave and an industrial conclave. We interacted with many experts inside and outside the country on many subjects. Then we prepared special documents and presented them before the people,” he said. The people believed that if the UDF came to power, it would address the areas where the previous government had failed, Satheesan said. He called “the erosion of the CPI(M)’s roots” a big factor in the LDF’s loss, with it winning just 35 seats against the UDF’s 102. “The LDF is now the extreme right. We are the Nehruvian Left,” Satheesan said. The “adamant stand taken on secularism” by the Congress was another reason for the party’s win, Satheesan said. He faced resistance from within own ranks over this, as the CPI(M) too tried to woo communities in a state where both Christians and Muslims are in significant numbers. “Whenever religious leaders, whoever, started a hate campaign, we said, ‘No, don’t speak communalism. Don’t start hate campaigns’. That was a strict positioning… Our strong secular stand without any dilution was accepted by the people of Kerala,” he said, noting the party’s rejection of the offer of support by the Social Democratic Party of India, the political arm of the banned Popular Front of India. On what was ailing the Congress nationally, with the Assembly results in other states marking a further shrinking of the party, Satheesan said political parties need to be “election-oriented” and speak the language that the young generation understands. “Strengthening the organisation is important… Electioneering is an art and we have to do it with surgical precision.” In many places “outdated election campaigns” are taking place, Satheesan said. “Political leaders should learn the vocabulary of Gen Z. They use a different vocabulary. If we want to communicate with them, we have to understand their vocabulary, their thinking, their thought process, everything.” On the fate of the Left, now without a government anywhere in the country for the first time in nearly five decades, Satheesan said it faces disintegration. “If they don’t correct themselves, what happened in Bengal and Tripura will be repeated in Kerala, no doubt,” he said.