Editor,
The story of the Congress fortune in the immediate future in 2022, 2023 and 2024 does not seem to instill much hope and confidence for its high command and the rank and file of the party everywhere in India. No amount of effort was put in place for its revival because the high command of the party refused its total overhaul right from the topmost level.
In fact, Sonia Gandhi, in spite of her long years of presidentship in the party has not instilled much leadership among the rank and file of the party, nowhere near the leadership, dynamism and mass following of her mother in-law. Turning to her son and daughter, except that they are the children of former Prime Minister of India, so far they are yet to make any impact in their party and Indian politics and instill no confidence at all amongst the demoralised beleaguered party rank and file.
Again if we turn to the Congress bigwigs who radiate around the Gandhis, most of them are deadwood and have no more vigour, dynamism, attraction and appeal to the millions of new aspiring ambitious dynamic voters of progressive India. They have no more hope in this grand old party because they have seen enough of it.
The dismal performance of the monolithic old party has drifted very sharply since 2014 and badly deteriorated further in 2019 in the Parliamentary elections. Again, in Assembly elections held since then (2019) out of 17 states it has failed to win any state on its own. Except in Maharashtra when it won quite a few seats while in Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu it became a mere junior partner, just by winning insignificant seats.
In some states the party was able to win only in single digits.
In the General Elections to the Lok Sabha slated for 2024, the Congress may face another rout if the political scenarios are of any indication as of now. It will be very difficult to get seats from Uttar Pradesh, Assam and seven other northern states as also in West Bengal, Orissa, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Goa but it may fare a little better to get some seats from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Himachal Pradesh.
However, judging from the present political physical signs the party’s performance will not be as bad as doom but it will take quite long to come to power provided it is humble enough to admit its mistakes and adopt drastic steps even to the point of doing away with the power circus of the Gandhi family. But there is no magic wand not even that of Prashant Kishor that can propel Congress to power at least in 2024 or in the near future at the Centre because the political space of the Congress has been firmly annexed by the regional parties in different states and regions including the advent of AAP and owing to the political might of the RSS-Bajrang Dal-VHP-BJP combined. The Congress has to blame itself because of not changing itself with the changing times.
