The resignation of Ghulam Nabi Azad has once again brought to fore the crisis in the Congress party. The fact that Ghulam Nabi Azad has accused Rahul Gandhi of destroying consultative mechanisms within the party, perhaps the first attack in Gandhi from a senior leader of the party only underlined the latent discontent within the party.
HT’s data and political economy team has covered these issues over the years. Here is a brief recap of some of our coverage.
Rahul Gandhi had a promising start to his tenure as the Congress president which came after the Congress giving a close fight to the BJP in Gujarat 2017 and winning Rajasthan Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh elections in 2018. However, the party received a shock defeat in the 2019 elections and instead of a careful introspection Gandhi actually took a self-righteous stance. This analysis tried to explain why Gandhi’s diagnosis of the 2019 results was wrong.
Read: Rahul Gandhi’s letter highlights incorrect diagnosis of ’19 results | Analysis
In fact any analysis which does not look at the Congress’s problems as long term in nature, which is what this article below highlighted, cannot get to the core issues affecting the party.
{{/usCountry}}In fact any analysis which does not look at the Congress’s problems as long term in nature, which is what this article below highlighted, cannot get to the core issues affecting the party.
{{/usCountry}}Read: Understanding the crisis plaguing the Congress
Rather than addressing these issues the Congress has been trying to play clever by half by exploring regional contradictions or championing a left rhetoric to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the process, it has only lost more ground to both the BJP and regional parties as was explained in these stories below.
Read: How region-wise contradictions are pulling Cong apart
Read: Modi hit Cong over class, with a dash of cultural nationalism
Such an attitude is combined by the party’s futile quest to revive itself by so-called silver bullets such as hiring a consultant...
Read: Terms of Trade | The Prashant Kishor saga: Can a consultant revive the Congress?
Or what can be described as mistimed mass contact programmes...
Read: Number Theory: Has the Congress jumped the gun on its Bharat Jodo Yatra?
While the Congress is increasingly getting weakened, it is still an indispensable component of any strategy which seeks to politically defeat the BJP and herein lies the biggest challenge facing the Indian Opposition.
Read: Can the Trinamool Congress replace the Congress as the main opposition party?