It has indeed been a great crash for the Congress party in the Lok Sabha elections this year where it has dropped to an ignominious 44 seats from a decent 206 in 2009. The vote share dropped to a little over 19 per cent compared to 28 per cent in 2009. In contrast, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main rival of the party, climbed to 281 from 116, and improved its vote share from around 19 per cent in 2009 to around 31 per cent this time round.

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In the aftermath of this shocking defeat, political experts and observers — in the manner of the moaning and whining elders of the chorus in Attic tragedy — have been diagnosing the ailments of the Congress and they have gone on to pronounce the crushing end to the old party. The chorus curses the Congress, and at the same time hopes the party would rouse itself from its stupor. Most of them are friends of the party who are enraged by its cobwebs, its apathy and its refusal to set its house in order. More than being friends of the Congress, they hate the right-wing politics of the BJP. They would have liked a non-Congress alternative to the BJP, but they have been more than disappointed in their quest for the holy grail of Indian politics. They feel they have been let down by the VP Singhs, the Mulayam Singh Yadavs, the Lalu Prasad Yadavs, the Nitish Kumars. So they are grudgingly reconciled to the Congress as the sole polar opposite to the BJP. There are many among these critics who see no difference between the economic policies of the two major parties, and use the curse-word “neo-liberal” to describe them. Those who oppose the BJP and hate the Congress for not being able to stem the rising tide of the BJP consider themselves to be pro-poor and meticulously avoid the word 'socialist' or 'leftist' to describe their political views. They are against economic reforms and the free market with its attendant evil of plutocracy and the consequent marginalisation of the poor.

In their rage and despair, the critics of the Congress fail to take note of some crucial facts. The defeat of the party in this Lok Sabha election follows 10 years in power — from 2004 to 2014. It would not have been such a good thing either for the Congress or for India if there was a third term in office for the party and the UPA. There was a need for change and the vote was for change more than anything else. There is need to consider an “if” scenario to get a clear perspective. If Narendra Modi had led the BJP campaign in 2009, he would not have been, perhaps, as successful as he has been now, or he would not have been successful at all. The media, and particularly the callow television news channels, made Election 2014 a duel between Modi and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi. It was a foregone conclusion that the Rahul vs Modi contest was weighted in favour of Modi. It is overlooked that besides his many leadership handicaps, Rahul was facing the anti-incumbency factor of his party’s 10 years in office. He did not have much of a chance to be the party’s saviour or mascot. 

It would not be right to blame either party president Sonia Gandhi or Rahul for the woes of 2014 because it was the party that won a mandate with reservations in 2004 as well as in 2009. The truth is that people generally voted for the Congress party and not for Sonia Gandhi in those elections. Sonia was the sheet-anchor, but not the winning factor, the way Modi has been for the BJP this time. So, it would be misplaced criticism to attack Sonia and Rahul for failing to win the elections. They have no charisma to steer the party to victory on the basis of the family mystique. There is a need to make the critical inquiry whether the family ever had won an election on its own strength. It was not so in the days of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. The evil of the Nehru-Gandhi monopoly over Congress is in the eyes of the critics and not that of the voters. The myth of the Nehru-Gandhi is the construction of the family retainers in the party on the one hand, and the impotent non-Congress parties on the other. People vote for a party and not for a leader. If Modi was a Samajwadi Party or a Janata Dal (United) or Janata Dal (Secular) leader, he could not have led those parties to power. There is no Modi without the BJP. Sonia’s contribution in the 16 years she has been Congress president is that she held the party together.  When people looked for an alternative in 2004, the Congress was there to step in.

The problem of the Congress is not the Nehru-Gandhi monopoly, though the party would be better off without Sonia or Rahul at the helm. The party needs to widen its leadership base, and it is likely to happen sooner than later. The more important issue is the Congress’s ideological dishonesty. It cannot any more pretend to be the party of the poor, of the oppressed and of the marginalised. The old socialist rhetoric has become stale. The party needs to embrace the rhetoric of economic reforms because it is the party that changed with the times and brought in the necessary policy framework. It should end the old, wily ways of being sympathetic to the poor and helping the rich. The Congress has been a majoritarian party in practice, and the BJP is a poor competitor in comparison. So, it should give up the game of caring for the religious minorities. What the party needs to do is to abandon the Machiavellian veils. Populism is legitimate but not hypocrisy. Congress needs a leader who speaks the language of modernisation. That was indeed Nehru’s forte, not so much his so-called socialism.

Now is the time for the ambitious, energetic and imaginative men and women in the party to throw their hats into the ring.  

The author is editorial consultant with dna