Will Congress revive anytime soon? Or its time-up?

When people become desperate, they take wrong decisions. And the wrong decisions lead to their doom.

Today, Congress party has come to such a juncture where it has become critical for the party to decide, what it wants to do today to secure its future. One wrong decision and the country will lose this grand old party.

For the past 4 years the party has been on a losing spree. They lost elections in all important states barring Karnataka. Now they rule most of the insignificant states. All the important states are being ruled by either BJP or other regional parties.

So what is the future of Congress? Does this grand old party have an opportunity to revive itself? Or they have lost it and its time up!!

Let’s do an analysis.

2004 UPA1

This was the year when Indian economy had recovered completely from the aftershocks of 1998 Pokhran blasts and sanctions that followed. The economy was growing at 8%. For the first time in long time foreign exchange reserves were very strong. Vajpayee government had taken huge initiatives to build the infrastructure and successfully implemented the golden quadrilateral highway project and made a significant progress to create a huge road network. All in all, it was a surprise loss for BJP and a big big surprise win for Congress.

With the economy progressing at a good pace UPA 1 had a great launch pad for itself to take India further forward and assert its legitimate position. The Manmohan Singh government made a significant progress till 2008 and carried forward the programmes which were started by NDA. The most important achievements of UPA 1 was trying to complete the 123 Civil Nuclear agreement which later helped us to initiate similar agreements with other countries such France, Australia, etc… Prime Minister Manmohan Singh showed a great resolve to conclude the agreement, however the Left withdrew the support of the government. The Prime Minster once again showed his political maturity and diplomacy in working together with Samajwadi Party. The BJP still had not recovered from the loss and did everything possible to stall the deal, which actually was initiated with GW Bush by none other than their own PM Shri Vajpayee.

Another significant achievement of UPA 1 was the initiation of Musharraf – Manmohan Singh pact to resolve the Kashmir issue once for all. All the while and almost every good decision of Manmohan Singh was projected to be taken by Congress party primarily by Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh never got or even try to stake claim for the credit of the achievements of the government.

Here Congress party employed a strategy of projecting Rahul Gandhi for all good decisions and achievements and at the same time blaming the Prime Minster for all the unsuccessful or stalled projects. At every juncture, the Prime Minister had to fight tooth and nail and finally give up to even junior ministers. The term “accidental prime minster” used by Manmohan Singh for himself was exploited by each and every Congressman.

2008 was the best year of Indian economy where it registered the highest growth of 9%. Inspite of lot of good things and few bad things of UPA 1, UPA never expected to win another election due to quite a few bad things like Common Wealth games scam happening in 2009. The BJP was still in search for their win and tried their best. Still they did not manage a win and conceded a defeat to Congress. The win by Congress was only and only due to the clean image of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

2009 UPA 2

Buoyant and confident due to the win, there was no better candidate than Manmohan Singh for the second term as Prime Minister although many from the party tried to project Rahul Gandhi as a candidate. Sonia Gandhi probably wiser than the Congressmen, vetoed in favour of Manmohan Singh. However, the troubles started for Mr. Singh from the day one. He was unable to decide on his cabinet members. Many decisions which should have been taken by him were taken by the party and he was held responsible for all the wrong results.

To add to the misery, for most part of UPA 2 the entire country was shaken by various scams which amounted to literally a significant chunk of Indian economy. The government undertook various popular schemes such as MNREGA which costed the exchequer a huge amount of money. Rather than focusing on building the skills and making common man, including the farmer self-reliant, the government focused on distributing money. Many scams even in MNREGA schemes were unearthed. Then there was coal scam, 2G spectrum. There was not a single day in UPA 2 where people did not hear a new scam. The scamsters were none other than the UPA member party ministers on whom the Prime Minister had no control.

So, the UPA 1 was full of positives which were completely washed away in UPA 2 only to start to build a grave for the grand old party.

People of India were sick of the scams and wanted a serious change. Then came Modi and we all know how he won the elections. It was rather an outright rejection of congress than win of Modi. Somebody had to win and this time it was Modi. People started drawing parallels between Rahul Gandhi and Modi. And the clear verdict was that Rahul Gandhi was no match for Narendra Modi. Modi not only was a good orator but had thorough knowledge about India as a country. He came from RSS legacy and had travelled entire country. Most importantly he came from a modest background. Rahul Gandhi had none of these qualities and yet the Congress party was or rather is hell bent on making him the Prime Minister. Making mockery of the modest background of Modi costed dearly.

May 2014

The grand old party suffers its biggest defeat and does not even manage to win 10% of the strength of the house. Even loses the right to the position of Leader of Opposition. Makes a huge hue and cry about not getting the position. That’s it. Now was the time the leadership in Congress decides to do exactly what BJP did in UPA 2.

Modi had promised development, clean and efficient governance. Congress made a strategy of disrupting each and every good decision of the government. The initiatives by the Modi government will take the country several years forward in world economy. And that will prove disastrous for the grand old party. The party leadership understood that even if 50% promises of Modi are delivered Congress won’t be able to make a comeback in 2019.

So, strategy was clear. Pick petty issues which are insignificant, irrelevant and start bashing the Modi government and ministers. Don’t let the parliament function, stall GST and other important bills which will take India’s GDP forward. Target ministers on petty issues where Congress party themselves had failed. Ask those minister’s resignation. This has been the strategy of Congress since the BJP came to power.

Lalit Modi case can be a classic example. Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj successfully countered arguments of Rahul Gandhi in parliament. What were these agruments? How much money did Sushma Swaraj take to let off Modi, the very person who was allowed to leave the country when Congress was in power!!! There was further embarrassment for Rahul Gandhi when someone clicked pictures of cheat sheets of Rahul Gandhi. With a stature of VP of a grand old party and PM aspirant, the cheat sheet was an embarrassment as it contained very very basic points. If a PM aspirant does not remember even smallest of things, what inference should we draw? Moreover, this was the first time entire India saw him debate in parliament, ask questions, only to be proven illogical later. All the past 10 years this person never asked a single question to his own government about the positive initiatives which will bring out good information and build image of his own government!!!

So when Congress party was in power they did not want to hear anything good about government or Prime Minister. Wanted to give credit of each good thing to Rahul Gandhi and each bad thing to the Prime Minster.

When they are not in power they behave erratically, illogically and stall parliament on petty irrelevant issues, helping to make image of the party to be anti – development, anti - people. It only remains a self-praising, self-centered Gandhi Private Limited Party.

The internal intellectual voices in the party remain suppressed. Jayanti Natarajan, Jairam Ramesh, Shashi Tharoor, etc… the people who helped this party successfully run their government, when spoke the right words were silenced. The grand old party has a tradition of people being close to the Gandhi family and talking, doing what suits best to this family. Having difference of opinion is crime and the opinion maker will be taken to task, whomsoever it may be.

All this for a person who does not know history of India, history of Congress party. Congress party today is like the Kauravs in Mahabharat. Sonia Gandhi has become Dhritarashtra who does not want to listen, see and speak anything bad about party or Rahul Gandhi even if it is a truth.

Rahul Gandhi has nothing more than to say “meri dadi ko mara”, “mere papa ko mara”. People are tired of these antics and it would be better for the Congress party to move on with life and stop making these things a basis of asking votes.

There was a little glimpse of hope when Priyanka Gandhi appeared on the scene. But then her husband’s name is now famous for all the wrong things. Her face resembles to that of Indira Gandhi, looks more mature and wise than Rahul Gandhi. If she just can say sorry to the people of India for whatever Robert Vadra did, there is a good chance of her gaining the past glory for the grand old party.

Otherwise it may be very very safe to say, till this party does away with dynastic politics or the Modi government does something seriously wrong, Congress party revival is not to be seen anytime soon.