Modi’s indispensability is borne out of the fact that even after his losing the political bout and being caught on wrong foot on all the national issues, the leaders of the Congress party and precisely its elected public representatives have been systematically deserting the party and joining Modi’s BJP. What does it imply? If the message of Rahul’s crusade against Modi has conscientiously spread horizontally among the rank and file, the party certainly must not have faced this situation. It underlines the utter lack of trust in the leadership.

The partymen nurse the opinion that neither Sonia Gandhi nor Rahul Gandhi could ensure them electoral victories. They need a strong leader. In the recent Rajya Sabha election Congress lost at least five seats owing to desertion of the MLAs. Two images emerged out during the recent Rajya Sabha election; one was of BJP’s desperation to get the upper hand in the Rajya Sabha and to achieve this it was seen resorting to all kinds of manipulative tactics, the second, the most important, was of the dispirited Congress which had bowed out of the fight even before it started. Whatever little success Congress could get was due to the efforts of the state satraps.

It may be argued that the BJP resorted to unethical means to win the seats. Ever since the coronavirus pandemic made its presence felt in India in March, the BJP has launched the operation to engineer defections in Congress to gain control of more and more states and bolster its numbers in the Rajya Sabha.

But that would not exonerate the Congress of its failure. The Congress leadership should have stood to the challenge and foiled the machinations of the BJP. But it failed. It is said that the Congress leaders are demoralised and have shifted their loyalty only for making money. Both these accusations appear to be politically correct. The leaders feel demoralised in the absence of a strong leader who can lead them from the front. Obviously such leaders would long for ill gotten money to secure their future.

The public approach and their style of functioning make it explicit that the Congress leadership could not visualise the nature and resolve of the BJP challenge. It is clear that BJP is surreptitiously pushing its agenda of creating “Gandhi family mukta Congress.” Through its sustained attack on Rahul, the BJP intend to completely make the Gandhi family redundant. The BJP leadership is aware that no other leader would be able to keep intact the party.

Congress which used to call shots in Rajya Sabha and embarrass the ruling BJP in the changed situation will even lose its sting. The BJP has inched closer to gaining control of the numbers in Rajya Sabha pushing the Congress further down. It now has 86 members and the NDA, the alliance it leads, has gone past 100 in the House of 245. The Congress, the principal Opposition force, has been reduced to just 41 members.

It is clear that the Congress faces an uncertain future. Rahul Gandhi, while connecting to the masses, ought to do introspection as to why his gesticulation has not succeeded in catching peoples’ imagination. On the contrary, though Modi speaks simply lies, people still tend to believe what he says. The fact remains that the grand old party is deep in the throes of an existential crisis.

He has to decode peoples’ aspiration; actually what people expect from him. Through his actions he intends to send the message that he is honest and hates corrupt elements. But it has not helped him to catch the peoples’ imagination. Like the adage that justice is simply not only done, but it must appear to be done, in politics too there is need to reach out the message to the people. On the contrary through his actions he built the image of an angry man which is not liked by the people of this country.

May be from his heart he is a man of the poor and sincerely tried to uphold their cause, but sad enough his actions failed convey this message. He resigned from the post of the president of the Congress, but most of the people do not the reason that made him quit. His action projected him as an escapist. By stepping down, Rahul left the Congress with an unfamiliar vacuum. His insistence that the next president of the Congress be chosen from outside the family though was viewed as a transformation for the party, it provided the right opportunity to BJP to malign him.

No fundamental change has taken place between June 2020 situation and that existed at that point of time. The situation is quite fragile and apprehensions are being expressed that the Congress might break up into smaller parties, each revolving around its own power centre. There may be no Congress at all.

The Congress losing bite and relevance is also manifest in arm twisting act by the chiefs of the regional parties on the issue of sharing of seats. In Bihar the assembly elections will take place in November. Already the RJD has started behaving like big brother and dictating terms. Congress lacks forte to resist.

Yet another reason for the decline of the party has been its reluctance to renovate its programme, its policy, its personnel and its electoral strategies. Congress has never been a party with bureaucratic approach. In the time when the political character of country is undergoing sharp transformation, adopting the capitalist politics and work culture, the Congress has to search for a political base.

The way the BJP and precisely Narendra Modi has polarised the Indian people and created a committed rightist vote bank consisting of the urban middle class and rich people, the Congress has to identify itself with the poor of the country. In the process the Congress may have to lose its core character of being a centrist and liberal organisation. It may alienate a major section of its traditional leaders.

Gandhis will have to change themselves to protect pluralism and secularism and to check the emergence of the rightist forces. The longer the Congress waits to get its act together, the greater the risk of a steady erosion of the credibility, its traditional vote bank and gravitation towards an uncertain future. While interacting with the migrants in Delhi, Rahul could have realised that Congress has become the victim of the lust and inducements of the urban middle class and the rich whose indifferent attitude, hatred and approach towards the poor have been on exhibition during the corono crisis, when nearly 50 crores of the poor and daily wage earners were desperately looking for helping hands. (IPA Service)