THE Congress party is working hard to prove itself to be spiritually defunct every passing day. The latest blunder it made in this regard was when it issued a social media post about Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi while he was on the State visit to Indonesia. The party’s social media handler isolated a picture of Mr. Narendra Modi and Indonesian Parliament’s Speaker Ms. Puan Maharani -- sitting next to each other in an elite line up for a programme in Indonesia. With that picture was a negative comment that seemed to malign the Prime Minister (and, so, the country). The party also realised its mistake and withdrew the post almost immediately, but not before the Bharatiya Janata Party had seen it and preserved it to launch an attack back on the Congress party for abusing the innocent picture. After the BJP blasted the Congress party for a social media post in a bad taste, there was a storm of criticism of the country’s oldest political party for its purposeful negativism -- which proves how defunct the party has become spiritually. Over the past some years, the Congress party’s organisational conduct has been negative. That has earned the party only enemies even among the common people.

 

This is visible in the ever-decreasing voter-support the party is getting over time. Despite this, there appears no internal audit of the party’s overall conduct as a political organisation founded over 140 years ago. Today also, the Congress party is the second biggest party in the country after the Bharatiya Janata Party. Despite this, the party and its leadership have shown no maturity of thought and action that would suit its own dignity. It is obvious that there is no person strong enough within the organisation to take a firm step and stop the nonsense in which the party indulges from time to time. If any leader tries to inject good sense into the system, he -- or she -- is rebuffed strongly and advised to keep his/her mouth shut and refrain from offering unsought advice to the party leadership. This process of internal suppression of voice of reason has cost the party quite a lot of leaders with proven good track-record. Despite such a sustained loss of human talent, the Congress leadership appears not to give up its own style -- of making self-goals on itself. In other words, the Congress leadership appears to be oblivious to the dangers it has subjecting itself to -- of being thrown out of the political system by a gradual but clear decline in its national vote share election after election.

 

Though it is the country’s second biggest political party, the Congress has been losing its popular support in most States in a steady manner. Currently, it has its Governments only a handful of States. In the next round of State elections -- in the next 6-7 months -- the Congress party is expected to lose another big chunk of vote share. Yet, the party leadership does not seem bothered about this decline. It continues with its brazen decisions that actually hurt the party’s interest -- short and long term -- rather than help.

 

It has never stopped heaping senseless criticism on the Prime Minister and his Government -- and thereby on the country. This aspect of the Congress party’s conduct is beyond the comprehension of the common man of India. The voter realises that the Congress party is in a suicidal mood -- and feels rather helpless when a party known to be the birthplace of most political parties in the country is poisoning itself to a slow death. He wonders if the Congress leadership is not able to see this danger lurking in the background. Going by the overall conduct of the party leadership, the common Indian voter does not grieve much about the decline of the Congress. For, the old Congress party populated by principled workers and leaders is no longer in existence and the current organisation has no respect for politics with dignity and sanity and spirituality. The common Indian people, thus, do not mind the Congress party going down the public esteem.