Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday told party workers at a meeting of senior party general secretaries, state unit chiefs and Congress legislature party leaders that they have to interact with people and issues from the ground and not just social media.
Congress is in a very dismal state with the party losing elections after elections since 2014. The dire straits of the party are evident from the fact that its top political brass of leaders are continuously doing the rounds of prisons and there is a serious dearth of leadership at the top given Sonia Gandhi had to come back at the helm of things. Congress won a measly 52 seats in the 2019 General elections, a tiny improvement from its 2014 tally of 44 seats.
Asking party leaders to pull up their socks, Sonia Gandhi said that the entire country is depending on the opposition to confront and combat forces that continue to misrepresent the “true message” of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and BR Ambedkar. She went on to say on the record that “We must stand up fearlessly to fight on the streets, fight in villages, towns and cities. We must have a concrete agitational agenda on issues of pressing concern to the people, whether they be economic or social.”
The statement by Sonia Gandhi becomes a laughing stock when forget fighting on the streets, five Congress MP’s did not even turn up for the voting of the Triple Talaq bill in Rajya Sabha earlier this year, which had caused major embarrassment to the Gandhi-family led party.
Rahul Gandhi, the party-prince, who lost his traditional stronghold of Amethi to the vociferous campaign of Smriti Irani who took down Rahul’s fort rather too easily had overhauled the social media plan of Congress as Party chief, where it had aggressively started taking potshots at the government.
The echo-chambers of twitter, facebook and other social media platforms had made Congress believe that it might be coming back to the power soon, but what happened is lodged in the history books for everyone to see.
Congress made a mockery of itself and such has been the humiliation that for two consecutive terms it does not have the right to be called Leader of Opposition in the parliament, it’s a travesty of epic proportions for a party that has been in existence for over 100 years that it does not even inspire any confidence amongst the common masses.
A major reason for Congress’s current predicament is its lack of connection at the ground level, the congress leaders and volunteers seem to be insipid and lacking in fervour whereas its counterpart BJP has such a minute level planning at the booth level that the rivals are seen appreciating it.
Not only BJP’s ground network support is enormous and active, but it’s social media outlets are a major hit too, garnering millions of impressions each day, BJP has effectively merged the traditional old-school method of reaching out to the voters personally and using technology to constantly remain in the public’s gaze.
Stunned by BJP’s social media outreach, Congress tried to imitate it, hoping to earn a quick turnaround in their fortunes. Instead, it forgot that it was the personal human touch of BJP that made it connect to the voters, something the congress majorly overlooked and in the end it came back to haunt them.
The fragile and laid back attitude of senior congress leaders who seem to be more focused on TV debates and social media dented Congress’s chances a lot, and if it hopes to reinvent itself in the upcoming assembly elections, it might for a change, listen to its interim president’s advice. The failed and lethargic system that Rahul Gandhi instilled in the party as President has certainly made things worse for the Congress’s first lady and she has her task cut out.