As the junior minister in the Congress led coalition government, the young man earned name for efficient performance and had given his best to ensure ouster of the BJP from the power corridors in the last Madhya Pradesh assembly election. Instead of a reward for his performance, he was ignored in preference to Kamal Nath by Rahul Gandhi. He decided to quit the Congress to join the BJP. Scindia’s decision to part with the family also came due to his reading that Rahul Gandhi and his inheritance matter the most in Congress. The Congress President is not willing to have a look at the pathetic conditions to which she brought the party in her 18 years stint as the party chief. She held the office for the longest term, more than all in the past century. She reduced the great political organization to be the family Jagir.

Indian National Congress inspired millions of Indians to join the battle for political liberation. Mahatma Gandhi converted the forum for radical debate by intellectuals, mostly lawyers since 1885 into a mass movement in 1918. People of ordinary lives joined the battle forgetting their differences of religion, caste, class or creed. They took blows of the state atrocities silently, without even raising their hand to resist the heavy blows.

Indian people gave a comfortable mandate to the party seven times in eight elections from 1952 to 1984. In 1977 election the Congress was voted out of power. The party got a single seat out of 339 in the North and East. However, in six states- four in South and two in West - it obtained 152 out of 204 seats in the same election. It could not obtain majority in the last nine elections. In the last two elections it could not muster enough number of seats to be recognized officially as the opposition. It is in a pathetic condition without hope of recovering the lost grounds. The leadership seems blind to the social and psychological transformation of the Indian society in last three decades.

The first Prime Minister saved Indians from falling prey to exploitation by the then existing only two ideologies, Capitalism and Communism. He did not want exploitation for private profits by capitalism or deprived of the fundamental rights under the state exploitation under the Communism. He did not abolish existing private owned units though imposed restriction on their expansion without the license. He assigned the development task to the public sector. The basic weakness in human nature is to grab as much as possible legally or even illegally. As prosperity booms it undid his efforts. Consequence of restrictive structure was in growth of corruption outstripping the economic growth.

His daughter Indira Gandhi had no ideological leanings or preferences. She swung the economic structure more to the left of the centrist model that was adopted by Nehru, only to marginalize the rightists in her party as well as emerging outside her party. She destroyed the democratic structure in her party only to ensure no internal challenge could be formulated within. She reduced every stature and structure to depend on her pleasure or be eliminated at her displeasure. In 1980, she replaced all leaders on their own with upstart who could not even stand without her holding their hands. In 1975 she eliminated the opposition by putting them all behind the bars. She did not believe in need of the party apparatus but in her image.

Most politicians, political observers got under an impression that she defeated the rightist combine in 1971 on her promise to remove poverty though she never made such a promise. She referred to the ideal of removing the poverty. In her both the terms she used lure of resources to manipulate her vote banks but never threw them at poor without utilization for national assets. She encouraged the frequent loan festivals for credits for creation of wealth and not for consumption.

Her son Rajiv Gandhi did not have clue of politics, economy or even social patterns. He wasted precious foreign exchange on liberal imports not for improving production at home but for luxury and comfort goods for wealthy. He did not realize he had condemned his own party as a bunch of power brokers in his presidential address at the centenary session of his party.

Narsimha Rao did not have to carry burden of the Gandhi family and he lost his courage to reintroduce the internal democracy in the party structure. He had to fight attempts to make him give up one of his two posts that he held in tradition set by Indira Gandhi in 1980. Even though the growth rate increased due to his opening few sectors for private participation, he could not win back power in 1996. The Congress party was again saddled with the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi was led to believe at the Congress session in December 1998 that her taking over the party signaled return of old glory. It did not as Sonia Gandhi could get only 113 seats in the 1999 election. In 2002 the party gave up its pretence of being the national party. But it did not restore the party to its past strength with a clear mandate either in 2004 or 2009. In entire 18 years, Sonia Gandhi treated the party as Jagir of her family.

She behaved more like a mother to ensure future of her son with her daughter sidelined. She could not see the rapid transformation of Indian society. As the party chief she nominated Dr. Man Mohan Singh to be the Prime Minister and be accountable though without power. She insisted and had the National Advisory Council that became the super cabinet. None of its members had popular sanction through votes. All were kind souls to believe that poverty can be removed through charity. They devised two schemes. Both were only for consumption without adding even a rupee worth to national assets. Both were to drain the national exchequer by Rs. 1.95 lakh crore.

She did not see like many others that Indian voters are not enticed with bribes in kind or money or influenced by caste considerations. They do not vote under threat of physical violence. The landslide outcomes in four elections confirmed it. Perhaps she could not break away from the persisting belief that her mother in law had enticed voters in 1971.

Sonia Gandhi was anxious to ensure that her son inherits the post that she attempted to ward off every possible danger to the congress prospects. Jyotiraditya was one sore person for her. The young Scindia earned name as an efficient compared to Rahul Gandhi. The young felt the pangs of maltreatment by the Gandhi family.

Sonia Gandhi was the cause for the debacle for the party in 2014 as her two allurements failed to attract poor but alienated the upper castes. It takes much more to inspire people to take blows. It is also not easy to motivate them to vote.