A Congress-mukt Bharat is fatal for India, not just the Gandhis

A fast fraying-at-the edges, crumbling-at-the centre Congress would naturally seek to reassure itself that all is not lost and the ship that once sailed majestically through the stormy seas of Indian politics may have keeled but is yet to sink.

That does not, however, mean that the reality reflects this self-deceiving perception: family-held loss-making firms, broke and on the verge of bankruptcy, are always projected as robust and profitable by their principal owners.

Responsibility

So it is with the Congress. The two principal stakeholders, Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the president and the vice-president of the party, are loath to admit that the Nehru dynasty-owned firm is on terminal decline.

Admission would necessitate owning up responsibility, accepting that it is they who are to blame for the wasting away of a once robust political organisation.

Sycophancy was the glue that barely held the cracks; with sycophants running out of political capital or abandoning ship, that glue is now coming apart.

The startling performance of the Congress in the Bihar Assembly election was advertised as the party hitting the comeback trail, led by Rahul Gandhi, the "dashing and youthful leader" pushing the wrong side of 40.

None in the party bothered to point out that in Bihar it was a pyrrhic victory for the Congress, that the real victory was that of the RJD and the JD(U).

Political analysts who did point this out were either ignored or labelled as anti-Congress. That they were right was proven by the Congress's washout in Assam. In West Bengal, Congress strongmen held their own, no thanks to either Sonia Gandhi or Rahul.

It was comical to see the "high command," no longer high or in command, try and secure the loyalty of the party's West Bengal MLAs through affidavits signed on stamp papers. They must have been both amazed and amused, because it wasn't loyalty to dynasty that had won them their seats.

Meanwhile, in Karnataka, the Congress government is in a tailspin, unravelling at a speed faster than in which its political foes can cope with. Any attempt to make amends will only create another group of dissenters without appeasing any of the factions.

In Punjab, where the Assembly elections are due in the near future, the Congress should have been preparing to assume office, replacing the incumbent battered and bruised Akali Dal-BJP government. But that's not the way it is.

Hobbled by intrigue and intransigent feuding leaders, the Congress in Punjab found itself being burdened with a nominee of "high command" who is perceived to be tainted by the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984.

How could one of the ministers have been nominated as in charge of Punjab? What and whose wisdom lay behind this decision?

Evidence

That this person has since resigned from his post is neither here nor there. It is equally irrelevant that there is scant evidence to suggest that he had participated in the violence that was unleashed after Indira Gandhi's assassination.

In politics, perception often outweighs reality, a fact unrecognised by the mother, the son and their unholy courtiers.

The future that stares the Congress in the face in Uttar Pradesh is no less bleak. Long ago abandoned and disowned by its traditional voters, the Congress is in search of both a face and an identity in this battlefield state.

It's a long stretch between now and polling next year, but unless a miracle happens, the Congress would come in last, again.

All this adds up the fast disintegration of India's only other national party.

Which, in other words, means the BJP's slogan of "Congress-mukt Bharat," or "Congress-free India", is coming true.

Worry

That should delight the BJP and its supporters. And it should worry India. Not because a natural corollary of a declining Congress is a rising BJP (as Left-liberals tend to fret and worry about) but because the Congress is being supplanted by regional parties with parochial agendas or, worse, dangerously loony agendas.

For evidence, you have to only look at Delhi. India's capital city increasingly resembles a Tughlaqian state run by a regime with a Gestapo mentality.

The worst Orwellian nightmares are coming true in this half-state; what's metaphorical today will be the reality tomorrow - from "arrest and interrogate" to "arrest and incinerate", history tells us, is not a very long journey.

Tragically, obsessed as it is with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress can't see the disastrous consequences of its collapse.

If only the minority shareholders would boot out the principal owners and rebuild the Congress! If only.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)