After BJP’s massive victory in the 2019 Parliamentary elections, its time to analyse what went wrong for the Congress which has landed the grand old party at the point of irrelevance. While Congress does not seem to have learned its lessons and insists on persisting with Rahul Gandhi as its supremo, the fact remains that the current leadership has failed to make a mark. The party with its entire ecosystem in place had tried to project Rahul Gandhi as a young and strong leader. In the run-up to the polls, Priyanka Vadra also came into the picture. An attempt was made to attract large crowds. Congress seems to have campaigned in the illusion that large crowds would compensate for a lack of leadership and vision. But it has been proved completely wrong.
As per a Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)-Lokniti survey, it has been reported that there is a wide chasm between the crowd at the Congress rallies, roadshows and other events and the vote share of the grand old party. In fact, one-third of the people who attended Congress rallies might not have voted for it. Moreover, more than 30 percent of those surveyed made it clear that they had not attended the Congress rallies on their own but had been brought to the rally by the Rahul Gandhi led party. It is clear that the Congress was trying to gain some popularity and in order to do that, it tried to create a fake impression by accumulation of huge crowds.
As per the study, around 40 percent of those who attended Congress rallies in western Uttar Pradesh were open to attending rallies and roadshows of other political parties. It is, therefore, clear that the grand old party was only deceiving itself by trying to woo huge crowds in its rallies and roadshows. The party has lost on the ideological front. Moving ahead in a visionless manner, the Rahul Gandhi led party must have been living in fool’s paradise to believe that artificial crowd and hype will help it in improving its tally.
The Congress needs to go through some serious introspection. It is only deceiving itself by banking on artificial hype and living far from reality. The party needs vision and inspiring leadership which cannot be compensated with misleading crowds.