Was 2024 Lok Sabha polls Congress’s dead cat bounce 2.0? | Number Theory

.

The Bihar election results have triggered an existential crisis of sorts for the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which has sunk close to its worst ever performance in the state in 2010 despite having a much wider coalition and vote share in the state. However, the Bihar results also merit revisiting an older and bigger question in Indian politics: the state of its oldest political party, namely the Indian National Congress. What is happening to the Congress after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections can only be described as the 2024 Lok Sabha election results being the second version of the proverbial dead cat bounce for the party. It is a party which is still the only national contender to the BJP but getting further and further away from being an effective challenger to the BJP.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Tuesday. (AICC)

Was 2024 Lok Sabha polls Congress’s dead cat bounce 2.0?

• 
  2024, like 2009, seemed like a reversal of the Congress’s long-term decline

  The usual schematic on Indian politics divides post-independent polity into four eras: Congress dominance or the First Party System when Congress dominated both the centre and the states (1952-67), Congress holding on to the centre but losing ground in states or the second party system (1967-1989), dawn of coalition politics (1989-2014) and the era of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dominance which has now been termed as the fourth party system (2014 onwards). Congress’s 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha victories, especially the latter when it crossed the 200-mark in the house for the first time after 1991 elections suggested some sort of a revival of the party’s declining fortunes. However, its crushing losses in 2014 and 2019, which also saw a non-Congress party getting a parliamentary majority of its own for the first time, put such beliefs to rest. When the Congress made a (relative) recovery in the 2024 elections, it seemed that the party had finally bottomed out.
• 
  But Congress’s Haryana and Maharashtra loss makes this theory questionable

  The Congress improved its tally by 47 (52 to 99) between the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections. 36% or 17 of these wins came from just two states: Maharashtra (12) and Haryana (5). In subsequent assembly elections in both states, the Congress either let go of its alliance (AAP in Haryana) or contested as the senior partner (Maharashtra) unlike what it had done in the Lok Sabha elections. Instead of increasing its seat share, the Congress and its alliance partners actually saw a decline in their seat share between the Lok Sabha and the assembly elections. To be sure, the Congress also failed to open its account in the Delhi assembly elections and was a part of the winning coalition in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand and now the losing coalition in Bihar, but one can argue that it was Haryana and Maharashtra and not the other four states which were the elections with the highest stakes for the Congress. Failing to convert Lok Sabha recoveries into wins was a big indictment of the party’s strategy in these two key states. When read with the fact that the Congress has not been able to retain a state government (where it has the chief minister) in the post-2014 period unlike the BJP which has done it in 12 elections across eight states and regional parties who have also done it in 12 elections across eight states (although two of these elections are for Bihar, where Nitish Kumar retained power with both the BJP and the Congress as allies), it raises an eve bigger question mark on the Congress’s ability to capitalise on its limited recoveries.
• 
  This is exactly what is leading to comments about Congress being a ‘parasitic party’

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi revived his “Congress being a parasitic party” attack in the aftermath of the Bihar results. While there is good reason to argue that the electoral performance of Congress’s allies is more dependent on their own politics and ideological clarity or lack of it -- Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand are examples of the former while the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar is a perfect example of the latter – the fact remains that a much larger share of Congress’s current MLAs and MPs come from states where it a junior partner to an alliance partner . It is unlikely that Congress’s present allies will junk it because of the BJP’s attacks, but what is also true is that Congress’s failure to capitalize on its own strength will erode its claims as a national party capable of taking on the present political hegemon, namely, the BJP. The Congress is unlikely to vanish from the country, but it also does not look anywhere close to regaining its mojo, which is what many people thought it had done soon after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. It is high time that it started engaging with this question earnestly rather than basking in the glory of its tepid 2024 revival or questioning the election process.