In a rude awakening for the Congress, the grand old party’s membership drive in Goa has fallen flat on its face. As against the Sonia Gandhi led the party’s ambitions of recruiting 2 lakh members in the state, it has managed only 2,600 members.
Congress’ woes don’t seem to end as four pro-CAA Congress leaders quit the Congress only a few days ago. Three of them went on to join the BJP.
The grand old party has been battling unpopularity almost since the start of this decade. And this is not a sudden or surprising pattern. The decline of the Congress has taken place to such an extent that no one fancies being associated with it. This can be attributed to specific reasons.
When the Congress-led UPA I came to power in 2004, the party had gained immense popularity. The economic boom at that time, though it was largely a legacy of the Vajpayee era, helped the party in staging an unexpected political revival.
Rahul Gandhi gained popularity, and though he was never really leading from the front, a pro-Nehru-Gandhi family mainstream media of the time was successful in projecting him as the youth leader and the new face that will take the party forward.
UPA-I went fine for the Congress. There were no signs of the party losing popular support, or the identity of a Congress supporter becoming a matter of derision. However, by the fag end of UPA-I and towards the starting of UPA-II, early signs of a Congress decline were visible.
The first signs came in the form of a spate of terror attacks that rocked the nation. 26/ 11 terror attacks, serial bomb blasts in Delhi and Guwahati in 2008, bomb blasts in Pune and several other major cities in all corners of India manifest how the national security apparatus had virtually broken down under the incompetent UPA regime.
The insensitive handling of the issue by the Congress only made matters worse for the party. In 2011, Gandhi scion went on to say, “It is very difficult to stop every single terrorist attack. The idea is that we have to fight terrorism at the local level. We have improved leaps and bounds. But terrorism is something that is impossible to stop all the time.”
The country was suffering the scourge of terrorism, and the Congress had officially given up on eliminating terrorism. This was followed by communalisation of terrorism as the Congress coined the term “Hindu terror”, a blunder which continues to haunt it even today.
The rise of Sadhvi Pragya and Swami Aseemanand that hurt the Congress substantially during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls can largely be attributed to the Congress’ strategy of inventing the lie of ‘saffron terror’.
Congress-led UPA II was fraught with trouble for the grand old party. A spate of multi-crore scams, including scams with mind-boggling figures such as the 2G scam, coal scam, Commonwealth Games scam, etc. ensured that the Congress lost 2014 Lok Sabha polls in such a miserable manner that no electoral analyst could have ever predicted.
Congress’ woes during UPA II got further compounded even in the midst of the economic mess created by an era of policy paralysis. All economic indicators- the Sensex, rupee, growth witnessed a downward spiral, even as troubles for the Congress kept mounting.
Congress also faced intense backlash as the government of the day lost respect internationally. India was placed among the Fragile 5 economies of the world.
Finally, the remote control status of PM Manmohan Singh and the weak character of his government which did not act despite grave provocations by Pakistan ensured a sharp decline in Congress’ popularity.
When the Modi government stormed to power in 2014, it was expected that the Congress would slowly, but steadily recover from its immense unpopularity. It was no longer in power and therefore had an opportunity to set initiate the process of gradual revival.
The Congress has only declined further ever since 2014, and the reason has been its utter desperation. The Congress does not know how to behave as a responsible and constructive opposition and therefore it has been aligning with anyone who is anti-Modi, even if it happens at the cost of national interest or security.
After the JNU sedition episode, the entire country was fuming about how the language of breaking India was being spoken inside the campus of a Central Varsity. Instead of condemning them, the Congress stood in solidarity with the “tukde tukde gang”.
Rahul Gandhi visited the JNU in a bid to support those who had raised anti-India, secessionist slogans. Rahul Gandhi wanted to corner the Modi government by aligning with anti-India forces, the move unsurprisingly backfired for the Congress.
The Congress degenerated the narrative further by taking cheap shots at Prime Minister Modi. Personal remarks and abuses at the Prime Minister which did not sit well with the people.
The Congress leaders acted as sore losers, especially with the EVM propaganda as they were never really able to fathom the back to back defeats that the Congress could never really get rid of.
Congress in the opposition has been more harmful to the nation than Congress in power. Throughout the tenure of Modi government, the Congress has time and again compromised with India’s interests.
The Congress has come out looking anti-development in its role as the largest opposition party. The manner in which it boycotted the GST launch in 2017 exposes its anti-development agenda.
The grand old party’s anti-development agenda even compelled former PM Manmohan Singh to skip the event. Both former Prime Ministers, Deve Gowda and Manmohan Singh were invited for the event, while Deve Gowda attend it, Manmohan Singh had to skip. It became further clear that the former Prime Minister was still subject to the diktats of the party high command.
During the Dokhlam stand-off, the Congress was caught in an embarrassing position when there were reports of Rahul Gandhi visiting the Chinese envoy amid heightened tensions between India and China. The Congress which was taken aback had first rejected the allegation, only to admit it later.
Not only this, the Congress did not even spare India’s military forces. During the 2016 surgical strikes, it asked for the proof of surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army in Pakistan occupied Kashmir across the Line of Control (LoC), much to the dismay of the entire nation. Last year, the grand old party again insulted the valour of the Indian defence forces, by questioning the Indian Air Force about the proof of Balakot airstrikes.
Even during the second tenure of the Modi government, the Congress has unabashedly taken a pro-Pakistan stand. In fact, after abrogation of Article 370, the Congress has been on the same page as Pakistan PM, Imran Khan.
Even the Leader of Congress in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, took an anti-India stance on Modi government’s August 5 move on Kashmir last year. He said, “You say that it is an internal matter. But it is being monitored since 1948 by the UN, is that an internal matter? We signed the Shimla Agreement & Lahore Declaration, was that an internal matter or bilateral?”
Apart from the anti-national narrative of the Congress, the intellectual bankruptcy of the party. Rahul Gandhi at the helm of party affairs has proved an absolute disaster.
The less said about Rahul Gandhi’s stupidity the better. His words and actions, which have reduced him and his party into a national joke, speak for him. Endless goof-ups by the Gandhi scion have been the biggest reason behind the party’s decline. When it comes to chalking out an electoral strategy, he has been even worse.
In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Rahul Gandhi spoiled the grand old party’s poll campaign with his groundless allegations of Rafale ‘scam’. He invented facts and disseminated lies in an unsuccessful attempt to fuel popular opinion against the Modi government. It did not took long before Rahul’s Rafale lies were exposed by the BJP. Once exposed, the Rafale agenda only proved counter-productive for the Congress.
With its anti-people and anti-India policies, Congress has alienated people of the country. The popular sentiment is against the party. It did manage to come to power in some states like Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh with slim victories, but that is largely a result of local issues and anti-incumbency, rather than a growth in the popularity of the Congress.
This is the reason why the Congress fared miserably even in those states, during the Lok Sabha polls, where it had emerged victorious only months before the Parliamentary Elections.
The Congress’ decline, though unsurprising, is rather dramatic, when we consider how even association with the party has become a matter of shame. No one wants to be associated with the Sonia Gandhi led party. And the Congress has only itself to blame for touching the zenith of political popularity.
The fact of public at large remaining reluctant to associate with the Congress gets reaffirmed strongly with the massive flop that the party’s recruitment drive in Goa has turned out to be.
It is not very difficult to find people who say “I support Narendra Modi”, or for that matter, one may even find people saying “I support Arvind Kejriwal”. However, no one will find people who say, “I support Rahul Gandhi”. Even the critics of the Modi government consider getting associated with Congress a taboo, and rightly so.