This is exactly what the Congress, the oldest political party in India, doesn’t need, yet can’t let go of — servile sycophancy.

Union minister of state for agriculture and food processing Dr Charandas Mahant was at his groveling best when he said that he would pick up a broom and sweep the Congress state office in Chhattisgarh (he has been appointed the working president of the state unit after the death of his predecessor, Nandkumar Patel, in the Sukma Maoist attack) if party president Sonia Gandhi asked him to.

He was replying to the question if he would be able to do justice to his ministry with the added responsibility.

And whose ghost was Mahant channelling? Indira Gandhi loyalist Giani Zail Singh, upon his election as President of India in 1982, had said that he would have picked up a broom and been a sweeper if Indira Gandhi had demanded it of him, and it was she who chose that he be entrusted with the highest office in the country.

But whatever happened to being the sworn servant of the people, servant meaning ‘in service of’ – and of the people, as against the party boss? That a learned man (as the ‘Dr’ before Mr Mahant’s name would suggest) who enjoys public support (he is the sole Congress MP from Chhattisgarh in Lok Sabha) would bend over backwards in a demonstration of loyalty is incomprehensible. Not that loyalty is a crime. Far from it; in fact, it is actually desirable in politics. But the manner in which the Congress brood have reduced it to mawkish fawning smacks of something dangerous – the death of dissent and debate within a party.

It has now come to a point when you would not be caught publicly wondering, let alone questioning, the merits of a decision which is purportedly the party president’s decree. Worse, you thank the individual and kiss the hem of her/his garment. This is how debate dies.

Like a colleague put it together in a snap judgment – first, there was the dynasty, and now the groveling. Feudalism is back in fashion!

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