Before talking about the Congress Party, let us talk about some numbers. Congress has 44 out of 543 (8%) Seats in the Lower House of the Parliament. With just 57 Out of 245 Seats (23%), Congress’s Majority in the Upper House of the Parliament has now become a thing of the past. As of today’s date, the party is in power in five states: Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Meghalaya and Mizoram. That’s 5 out of 29 (17%). Certainly Numbers such as 8%, 23% and 17% do not paint a pretty picture of the numerical strength of the Congress Party. The Congress Party has been on a steady decline ever since the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi stormed into National Politics. It has lost almost every single election after 2014, often drowning its allies with it. Its traditional bastions have been lost and the heir apparent of the Dynasty that Congress is, has been squarely rejected by people of this country. No amount of Marketing Campaigns can boost a product’s sales if the product itself is faulty.
While Narendra Modi has been the single biggest factor behind the total rout of the oldest party of India, the fact that Congress acts like a bunch of peevish old-timers without any purpose or agenda to corner the government is also one of the major reasons behind their downfall. Demonetisation was a super risky move, but PM Modi’s personal credibility ensured that the transition from “old cash” to “new cash” was smooth and peaceful. Congress was found sulking, and before it could create a momentum against the Government, things were back to normal. Similarly Surgical Strike along the PoK and Myanmar, India’s Bold stance against the Chinese in Doklam, made PM Modi an extremely popular Prime Minister.
But ever since the RBI Report about “99% Old Cash coming back to the system” and the Quarterly GDP figures were out, Government was caught on the wrong foot, probably for the first time in 3 Years. The Numbers weren’t rosy and many economists predicted doomsday. However there were some economists and CEOs who called the slowdown transitory in nature and termed Demonetisation and GST policies whose benefits will be visible in the long term.
So what was the Congress’s role in it? How did it use the numbers to corner the Government?
The answer is that it couldn’t. Congress, a party of intellectuals like Chidambaram, Sibal, Jairam Ramesh and the acclaimed economist Ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couldn’t find a single point to corner the government. Instead, they latched on to the words of BJP’s Frenemies.
Let’s take a look at what BJP’s Frenemies said:
Arun Shourie mentioned that Narendra Modi was pushing the Indian state into acquiring a “pyramidal decentralised mafia” structure. He said Modi’s term is an era of true fascism because, unlike Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, the law today is what, for instance, cow vigilantes say it is. He further mentioned that Modi has a dark triad personality, which includes negative traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
Yashwant Sinha, Finance Minister in the Vajpayee Cabinet said in a newspaper column that demonetisation was “an unmitigated economic disaster“. He indirectly questioned why Arun Jaitley was made the most critical minister in the present establishment, despite his losing elections.
BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha tweeted that not only does party colleague Yashwant Sinha have a right to criticise the government’s economic policy, he’s also accurate in saying India has suffered because of the note ban and demonetisation.
So congress leaders simply used the words of Shourie, Sinha and Sinha to create a narrative against the Modi government along with Manish Tewari and Digvijay Singh’s abusive rants on Twitter.
Every opposition criticizes government policies but even disapprovals should be original. Compare this with BJP’s performance as the Opposition. The momentum that BJP created against the Congress in 2012 never slowed down for a second. 2G Scam, Coalgate, CWG Scam, Waqf Board Land Scam, Illicit Arm Dealings, Saffron Terror hoax, Ishrat Jahan, slowdown of economy, Scarcity of Jobs, Minority Appeasement, Communal Violence Bill, Food Security Bill, Failure of MNREGA, the list is endless. BJP had a new agenda for every month and they executed it to perfection. And in the last 3 Years of Modi Government, Congress has tried bludgeoning it with well…intolerance, porn, beef, campus politics and “Who PM Modi follows on Twitter ”. They invested their strength in proving that intolerance is a real issue, while meatier issues like demonetisation, GST and the current slowdown in economy weren’t dealt with similar passion.
So What does it prove?
While Congress’s leadership is in complete disarray is a known fact, the complete failure of the Congress as an opposition proves that even its core team is uninterested or ill-informed. This is the first Deduction.
But more importantly, it proves that in a matter of 3 Years, PM Modi has made Congress Party so desperate that it has no plan of its own to pursue, Hence, it is looking up to BJP’s frenemies to decode the problems and provide them with an agenda to chase. PM Modi has rendered Congress into a shaky, unsure party that now lacks the necessary firepower to create and pursue a plan against the Government. PM Modi has drilled a hole right in the very heart of the Congress Party.
