Congress is drowning. Some heading for the door, others taking note of the emergency exits

We hardly remember politicians who opposed Roosevelt, Thatcher. They weren’t useless, but it became nearly impossible to fight their popularity. I suspect the Modi phenomenon is something like that.

Illustration: Soham Sen | ThePrint

Nothing reeks as much as the stench of failure. Animals often hunt by smell; seeking out weakness and failure. So do politicians. When they smell distress and helplessness, they move in for the kill.

Ask the Congress. It should know. Over the last few weeks, virtually anyone who can tear into the party has ripped off a piece. Let’s start with the ill-starred INDIA coalition whose members are so reconciled to the victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections that they get their kicks by digging their teeth into the Congress.

Sometimes the slaps come from adventurers like Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who scurried off to join up again with the BJP while writing off the Congress. Sometimes it is a deliberate undermining of the Congress. For instance, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have gone ahead and said they will fight all seats in the states where they were supposed to align with the Congress. And often it is just abuse. Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee recently tore into the Congress with a ferocity that even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) must envy.

Within the Congress’ own ranks, many people are heading for the door. And others are taking note of the emergency exits for when they need to get away quickly.

Congress’ bleak future

There was also something sadly predictable about the departure of politicians such as Ashok Chavan. He may have been a former Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra but he also believed the party had no future in the state and embraced the BJP when it promised him a Rajya Sabha seat.

The Congress has seen many bad times over the last decade, but rarely have things been as bad as they are today. Even its own members see it as a party that is going nowhere. Those who have nothing against the leadership are also re-examining their options. It is not personal, they say; we are in politics to do things, and you can’t achieve anything if you are going to stay in a party that is never going to come to power at the Centre.

When did things get to this stage? Despite all the trouble it has been in over the last several years, the Congress has had its highs, its moments of euphoria. The Karnataka Assembly election victory was one such moment. The response to Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra was another. Neither led people to believe that the Congress was going to win the next general election. But seen together, the small and medium-sized triumphs created the sense that the Congress was not done for, that it still had a future, and that it would be a mistake to write it off.

I reckon that the mood of optimism about the Congress evaporated when the results of the last lot of state elections came in. And it was Madhya Pradesh that really made the difference.

By all rights, the Congress should have won the state. After all, it had won the last Assembly election only to see its government toppled by defections. Wouldn’t the people of Madhya Pradesh want to see that order restored? Why would they vote for tired old Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who ran the state term after term with diminishing effectiveness and who, it was clear, was going to be pensioned off by the BJP after the election?

The Congress thought this too. When some of the exit polls predicted a BJP victory, Congress leaders were not just disbelieving; they were downright dismissive. There was no question of the BJP winning, they said. All that remained to be decided was the margin of the Congress triumph.

The defeat, when it came, demonstrated several things. First, the Congress had lost the ability to read the mood of the people. Its leaders campaigned in the districts and the villages without ever realising that they would be swept away by a BJP landslide.

Second, no matter how well it did in Karnataka or Telangana, the Congress was finished in the Hindi heartland. If it could lose Madhya Pradesh—where it had everything going for it—what hope did it have of winning in states where the going was more difficult?

And third, if Modi could not be defeated in the Hindi heartland — and the Assembly election results suggested that he had the Hindi belt sewn up — then, no matter how he did in the South, he would still win enough seats to form the government. So, what chance did the Congress have of ever coming to power in Delhi as long as Modi was around?

If you think back to the Madhya Pradesh results, that is the exact moment when people stopped taking the Congress seriously. Politicians stopped caring what the Congress leadership believed. Their view: It is going to be Modi for the next five years so who cares about this lot? And five years later, who knows what shape the Congress will be in or who its leaders will be?

You have got to ask yourself: Could the Congress have done anything differently in the last few months? Well, it could have done a better job of fighting the Madhya Pradesh election, for sure.

But, beyond that? Frankly, I can’t think of very much it could have done differently. It is as strong or as weak as it was when it won Karnataka in 2023 and at that stage, people were still talking of a Congress resurgence.

Fighting Modi

By now, we have heard the familiar explanations rolled out, year after year, for the Congress’ failures. Some of them are well-founded. Yes, the public mood is against entitlement and family parties. Yes, Rahul Gandhi was not a Congress President who captured the national imagination. Yes, the Congress needs more inner-party democracy. It needs to listen to its older and more experienced leaders.

However, all of that is not enough to explain the recent decline in the Congress’ stature and credibility. And besides, many of those criticisms have already been acted on. Rahul Gandhi is no longer the party president. He is not the party’s declared Prime Ministerial candidate. The Congress has appointed Mallikarjun Kharge as president, a politician with no dynastic baggage, after an internal election. The party has listened to old and experienced leaders: The last round of Assembly elections was handled by veterans Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel, and Kharge himself who led the party to defeat.

So those explanations don’t work.

The real reason why the Congress is in such a bad place may be something that has nothing to do with the party itself. It may just be that it faces a charismatic strongman leader who has captured the national imagination and is therefore almost impossible to defeat electorally, at least in Lok Sabha elections and in most of North India.

People who talk about Modi’s popularity usually reach for loaded parallels such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s RC Erdogan. But there are other examples from history: Franklin D Roosevelt in the US, whose popularity was such that it led America to amend its Constitution to limit a President to two terms. It was after Roosevelt died during his fourth term. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher led her party to landslide victories in three consecutive general elections.

We hardly remember the politicians who opposed Roosevelt and Thatcher, not because they were useless but because it became nearly impossible to fight against the popularity of such powerful leaders. I suspect that the Modi phenomenon is turning out to be something like that.

Roosevelt and Thatcher transformed the countries they led. It is now clear that Modi will do the same. So, pity the poor Congress. It is caught up in the whirlpool of history, trying ineffectually to wave, but actually it is drowning.

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Ratan Priya)