THE biggest challenge the Congress party faces today comes from within its own folds. In fact, this challenge has been brewing for at least the past quarter of a century, though the party bigwigs have chosen to ignore it. Now, however, things are coming to a boil, and the party has begun facing sort of a terminal illness. If a major correction is not undertaken at the earliest, the Congress party will soon realise that it has to be kept alive artificially. One of the latest proofs of this hard truth has come from Karnataka where the ruling Congress party has lost four Legislative Council elections in one shot. In other States, too, a near similar result has emerged -- showing the Congress party’s declining grip on voters’ mind. Those who have seen the party’s glorious times when it was in power realise that a serious top-to-bottom overhaul of the organisation is the need of the hour for Congress.

 

The silent opinion that prevails under the rug within the party is that the party needs an immediate change in top leadership whose present incumbents have run out of creative ideas to run the organisation. In the past some years, every major political campaign of the Congress party has led to further decline in its popularity -- despite the fact that some of those campaigns were brilliant in ideation -- such as Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s two across-the-nation yatras. But the party failed to cash upon those ideas because organisationally it is incapable of picking up grand ideas and convert those into useful tools. The current ‘Vote Chori’ narrative, too, appears bound for failure since it has already lost its steam. The party is positioning itself as the leader of the Opposition’s mega rally on November 1, 2026, in New Delhi. But in every likelihood, it may find itself isolated by other parties because it is trying to usurp the leadership it does not deserve. Political observers are of the opinion that the Congress party’s internal organisation has grown so weak and listless that it does not have a structure that acts as a steel-frame for the nationwide spread of the party. The vast membership -- though of late shrinking -- finds itself directionless as the leadership lacks the philosophical vision to create a sensible goal for the future.

 

The grassroot members feel that the party does not offer them opportunities to bring to fore genuine issues of public interest. The grassroot workers also allege that the entire leadership structure is geared to serve only the Gandhi family and not the organisation as such. The general experience of the Congress cadres is that any attempt to initiate a discussion draws the leadership’s ire, so much so that grassroot workers keep leaving the party for good in big numbers all the time. The Congress organisation has many members of great merit at all levels. Yet, the leadership does not have the sense and maturity to utilise their talent to take the party forward -- since it is obsessed with its own position within the organisation. One of the greatest examples that people love citing is that of Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a man who has earned respect in all sections of the larger Indian society because of its achievements and scholarship beyond dispute. Political observers often express surprise that Dr. Shashi Tharoor is still hanging on to the party despite the fact that he is not respected appropriately at the highest levels.

 

The overall impression about the party in popular mind is that it is an organised leashed to the interests of the Gandhi family with little regard for genuine national issues that can be picked up in people’s interest. There is a strong but silent opinion among the grassroot workers that unless the party is led people with long-term vision and is smart enough to offer an effective counter to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s creative leadership, it would never see the dawn of success. However, this very idea has not found a collective and organised expression in the Congress organisation for the obvious reasons that those raise their voice questioning the system, are excluded from things carefully and ruthlessly. To this reality, the Congress organisation has no answer.