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BHOPAL: After a long time, the Congress workers of Madhya Pradesh celebrated a big victory after the election of the party candidate Vivek Tankha in the Rajya Sabha biennial poll defeating all the efforts of the ruling BJP to capture the seat by resorting to malpractices. The veteran leader Kamal Nath led the Congress campaign and his success has given a new confidence to the Congress workers in the state which faces assembly elections in 2018.

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has won the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Presidential elections in November this year after a gruelling battle with the Socialist Bernie Sanders who has created history in the US politics by radicalizing the election agenda and converting this 2016 elections into a battle of issues instead of personalities. Hillary surpassed the majority figure of 2383 votes on June 7 night after the results of polling in primaries and caucuses to the six states, were declared and with President Obama endorsing her candidature, Hillary is now presumptive Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party who will take on Donald Trump at the November elections.

This time, Arun Jaitley hasn’t called the protests over the censoring of the film, “Udta Punjab”, as “manufactured dissent” as he did when sections of the intelligentsia were returning their awards over the government’s “intolerance” of dissent.

Union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan may not quite agree that his low profile and yet most publicly scrutinised department could do much better in the last two years to win over the stakeholders — consumers, traders and NGOs-- despite the delivery complexity in the areas it functions. A good number of decisions come under inter-ministerial initiatives, cooperation and agreements. And, that invariably opens opportunity to delay decisions. Bihar's Lok Janshakti Party supremo Paswan, an eight-term Lok Sabha member and a distinguished, hard-working telecommunications minister in the previous NDA government under Atal Behari Vajpayee, may be finding it rather tough to deal with inter-ministerial panels to meet the expectations of the public, the business and traders' communities and aggressive NGOs, especially those concerned with rights of consumers. Paswan is faced with a demand to legalise the direct selling business and set up even a regulator which he has not been able to act upon in the last two years.

In 2016, with another round of elections to the Rajya Sabha coming up in various state assemblies, the continued abuse of the idea of the Rajya Sabha by so-called “national” parties has come to the fore. A large number of Rajya Sabha members, past and present, have been representing states with which they really have no connection at all, thus undermining the very principle of representation that is supposed to be the bedrock of representative democracy.

In the past many leaders had left the party, abusing the leadership and formed their outfit. Most glaring example was of YB Chavan and many of his type who left the Congress and latter returned on bended knees. There was time when a powerful section of the party revolted against the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and formed Congress-Tewari (ND Tewari). As powerful leaders as Arjun Singh, ML Fotedar and Natwar Singh joined it. In the course of time the Congress-Tewari could not make a headway and all those who had formed it returned to the party fold.

While presenting the union budget for 2016-17, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Government plans to revive unserved and underserved airports in the country to give a fillip to regional connectivity. He also said that there are about 160 airports and airstrips with state governments which can be revived at an estimated cost of Rs 50 crore to Rs 100 crore each in parnership with the Centre.

The two day visit of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States of America on June 7 and 8 and the joint statement of Modi and the US President Barack Obama give definite pointers to a tilt in Indian foreign policy towards the US and this marks a milestone in terms of deviation of the country’s foreign policy from the objective of non-alignment. The foreign policy has to undergo changes taking into the global geo politics and even in the UPA regime under Dr. Manmohan Singh, there were definite signs of shift towards the US as a part of Dr. Singh’s craze for high technology and big investments from the US, but still there was a dividing line. The NDA Prime Minister has crossed that line and openly declared that “today our relationship has overcome the hesitations of history”.

With the end of the crucial set of assembly polls in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala, politicking has already started for the Lok Sabha polls in 2019. Mamata Banerjee, the biggest winner of this round in terms of percentage of seats, made that very clear. These assembly polls were crucial as they come to define the nature of the forces that would be the principal adversaries come 2019. So, after the results are out and the dust has settled, what does it look like?

Should the Congress Party be worried about the continuing erosion of its workers and leaders? Are the rats leaving the sinking ship? There is no doubt that the party is losing its organisational depth, more so since Modi came to power. There is rebellion brewing in various states. This week alone saw the exit of two senior Congress leaders - Ajit Jogi in Chhattisgarh and Gurudas Kamat in Maharashtra frustrated with the Congress leadership (read Rahul Gandhi). While Jogi, a former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, has launched his own outfit, Kamat wants to quit politics altogether. To add to the confusion, six Congress MLAs left the party in Tripura on Monday.