Cong story: Beaten but not out yet

Aam Admi Party leader Raghav Chadha did raise several eyebrows when he remarked soon after the results of the five state polls started coming in that his party will emerge as the national and natural replacement for the Congress in the coming days.

Not many leaders would have even thought of making such a statement a few years ago but the times have changed and Chadha’s remark is a pointer to the sorry predicament the Congress finds itself in after the electoral rout. Uttar Pradesh, the home terrain of the Nehrus, has seen a total whitewash of the party which could win only two seats of the total 403. Elsewhere, in Goa and Uttarakhand, it came a poor second despite spirited campaigns by senior leaders. And in Punjab, the less said the better with most of its top leaders falling by the wayside as the AAP rode to power promising clean and performance-oriented governance.

So has the Congress really been decimated? Is it the end of the road for a party which took the country to freedom from the colonial yoke and saw thousands of its workers being thrown in jails and going through untold suffering at the hands of the British? Are the curtains slowly coming down on a party which guided India through the initial decades after Independence?

The Congress has seen electoral reverses of the worst kind in recent years with its Lok Sabha tally falling to double digits and many of its top leaders breaking away to join other parties. But isn’t it too early to write the obituary of the Grand Old Party which still has adherents in every village and mohalla of the country?

To gauge a party’s reach and make a prediction on its future based on electoral success or failure seems a bit too naive and Chadha seems to be doing exactly that. The Congress may be falling behind the BJP or AAP in seat numbers but it still commands the respect and allegiance of a large chunk of the voter population in the country, maybe because of historic reasons or because of its secular and democratic credentials. There is every possibility of the party bouncing back for voter preferences can take a U-turn as dramatically as they have done in previous years.

That does not mean one can turn a blind eye to the decline in its vote share and the rapid fall in its seat numbers. There is also a leadership vacuum with ambitious politicians, sensing that they have no future in a party which cannot guarantee them a win, disappearing for greener pastures. The leadership now is limited to a core group considered close to the Gandhis.

So where does the solution lie? The Congress will have to identify dynamic, popular and powerful leaders who can infuse hope in the rank and file and take on the high and mighty in the BJP. And if that does not happen quick, and the party continues to blunder and botch up on its strategies, Kejriwal’s AAP is always waiting in the wings to make the most of its fallacies.