Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Congress leaders have been at their vociferous best while leading Opposition parties in slamming the Modi government for coming up with what they claim to be a pro-rich Budget earlier this month. Ever since Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman finished presenting the growth-oriented Union Budget 2022-23, the grand old party of India has been masquerading as a crusader of the poor, the middle class, small businesses and farmers while constantly suggesting that the ruling regime is pandering to the interests of big corporates and crony capitalists in the name of all-round development.
Meanwhile, however, poll-bound Punjab is dangerously close to becoming a living example of how and why the Congress has been losing state after state and the vast majority of elections it has contested over the past years. The Congress has not been in power in Uttar Pradesh for over the past three decades and it is practically a fringe player in the ongoing assembly polls in the electorally crucial state. Its story in other states such as Bihar, West Bengal and Gujarat – or even Odisha for that matter – are not much different either.
Anyway, getting back to Punjab, the state had seemed poised to remain under Congress rule, and most certainly out of bounds for the Bharatiya Janata Party, considering the events surrounding the protracted farmer protests that had happened not too long ago and were fresh in public memory. But with what has happened since then – starting from the disruptive second coming of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu as the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President, to the shocking ouster of then CM Amarinder Singh, to the nomination of Charanjit Singh Channi as the chief ministerial candidate, and all the infighting these events have stoked – the outcome of Punjab polls is anybody’s guess now, with opinion polls predicting a hung assembly.
If that is how things play out and Congress ends up losing Punjab, the Gandhi family will only have themselves to blame. Or will they? If the past is any indication, they probably won’t. After every major electoral loss since 2014, the party high command has come up with a stock response: that it would introspect about it. But none of that introspection (if that happens at all) seems to translate into any tangible action. After Rahul Gandhi’s resignation as president in 2019, the year Congress failed to win enough seats to even stake claim as Leader of Opposition, the party continues to be plagued with leadership and organisational uncertainties as sycophants prevail over those calling for change.
In some ways, the Congress’s current situation may be compared to what Air India’s was until recently. Only after the takeover by Tata Group, the future prospects of this long loss-making and lousily managed flag carrier of India are finally beginning to look up. If you change nothing, nothing will change. The Modi government knew that about Air India within a few years after coming to power at the Centre. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav figured that out not long after losing power in Uttar Pradesh (which is why SP is posing such a formidable challenge to the ruling BJP in in the ongoing UP assembly elections). The Congress, too, must realise that trying to use the Budget as a stick to beat the BJP is not going to buy it time to right its own ship.
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