The incumbent National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’s) landslide victory in the Maharashtra assembly elections and a weak show by the Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA) are worrying for India’s principal opposition establishment, the INDIA bloc’s future. The Congress especially, has lost much of its electoral significance as a political party in regions where it once had a significant presence.
While the Jharkhand results anchored by the Jan Mukti Morcha’s (JMM’s) strong performance are welcome, driving any major change that triggers a national alternative power structure against the BJP will need more than small victories like these.
With all critical states in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) stronghold now – Maharashtra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh – this projects unparalleled strength for the ruling party, its leadership, organisational cadre, grasp on local issues and financial clout, all of which are essential in winning elections.
I previously argued how the Congress party, its central leadership, particularly the Gandhis, need to acknowledge and learn from past mistakes as they not only continue to lose electoral credibility, but often fail to exhibit basic operational tenets of an important political organisation.
Election after election, the Congress struggles to capture the popular imagination and inspire voters to seek change.
Regional political anchors like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been distancing themselves from the INDIA bloc and the Congress, leaving the state of the national opposition fragmented and demoralised. In this context, the alliance’s electoral setback in Maharashtra is hard hitting.
It seems that a crisis of delusion, distraction and lack of direction is plaguing the grand old party.
A crisis of delusion has a lot to do with the party’s own internal state and vision. The degree of misplaced entitlement and dynastical privilege amongst certain leaders has led them to live in a bubble.
Also read: Jharkhand: With the Bogey of ‘Bangladeshi Infiltrators’ the BJP Scored a Stunning Own Goal
The Congress views itself not as an opposition party but as one that used to be in power, failing to consistently take the fight – whether on the streets, in parliament, or through other channels of political engagement – against the BJP.
Even on critical issues such as discrepancies between polled and counted votes in EVMs, and serious concerns arising from the recent vote count in certain constituencies during the Haryana election (similar to earlier reports from Uttar Pradesh and now Maharashtra), the opposition failed to launch any significant movement to capture the people’s imagination. Political leaders can write op-eds on it or post on social media, but ultimately a sustained effort is needed.
A crisis of distraction, driven by inattention to core political issues and lack of coherent electoral agenda in state-elections, has afflicted the Congress party for some time now.
While the BJP in Maharashtra, which was reduced to around nine seats in 2024, started preparing for the assembly elections immediately after the Lok Sabha results, the Congress and the MVA dragged their feet on every decision relevant to Maharashtra.
The MVA failed to project a coherent narrative or present a united effort by having a chief ministerial face. This is particularly jarring since the alliance in 2019 was created on keeping Uddhav Thackeray as its chief ministerial candidate.
The NDA, on the other hand, won the election by keeping strong local leadership in unison under both Fadnavis and Shinde. The Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) too played a strong role, as seen in Haryana, in pushing the BJP’s agenda at a local level by organising thousands of sabhas which helped the NDA candidates.
A crisis of misdirection for the Congress involves the central leadership, the Gandhis, to constantly fail in learning from past mistakes.
When it comes to leadership, managerial strategy and coherent vision, the Congress appears confused, lacking a leader with strong electoral influence and strategy-building capabilities.
Also read: Widen Your Reach but Narrow Your Ideology: Two Takeaways of the Maharashtra and Jharkhand Results
Rahul Gandhi lacks both of these qualities and is perhaps ignorant of the consequences of a weak Congress for both the regional and national opposition landscape. This also presents a strong case for a non-Congress leader to build and anchor the INDIA bloc if there has to be any chance of a close contest against the BJP in 2029.
Unfortunately, Gandhi, who has failed to take on the role of the party president but somehow still remains the main party face, has not been able to sufficiently carve a space out for new, young leaders to dynamically win elections for the party.
Meanwhile senior leaders, who are put in-charge on state-wide election campaigns continue to fail in their assigned roles without being benched or facing negative consequences from the party high command. In Maharashtra’s context, it was Bhupesh Baghel and Ashok Gehlot from the Congress who were overseeing and leading the charge for the party’s operations.
The other aspect of this crisis has to do with the party’s core socio-economic agenda.
The empowerment focused approach in safeguarding upward mobility is critical in shaping an alternative imagination of an electorate that feeds on new information from social media, and YouTube. When it comes to winning elections, the digital narrative is as important as the local narrative, along with a booth-level strategy for influencing core-voter groups (mapping their needs with announced interventions).
Given how the Congress’s internal rivalries are still too close to the surface, its two attempted master narratives, one on caste and the other on farmers, are not enough to consolidate an electoral strategy.
The Gandhis need to recognise these pitfalls. Their overt emphasis on singular issues (caste and class) without connecting them to the complex, local dynamics and with the aspirational class of a rapidly changing electorate – whose needs and preferences are nowhere close to what they were a decade back – needs careful assessment.
The Congress leadership has to also ask whether merely banking on the distribution of constrained state resources, like public sector jobs or reconfiguring reservations, will result in the kind of coalitions it needs. For now, the Congress’s vote-share appears to be driven by an anti-BJP lobby, hardly backed by those who are imagining an alternative political change as the party offers no compelling vision.
The rout of the MVA this election, under the Sharad Pawar-Uddhav Thackeray combine, also signals a decimation of the old political elite system – the traditional dynastical form of political families and networks – that had shaped much of the regional and national electoral power landscape.
It’s a clear signal from the electorate against the old guard, which the Congress must acknowledge if it hopes to look beyond its own leadership – the Gandhis – for guidance, direction, and strategic control. Otherwise, under the current status quo, the future looks grim not only for the Indian political opposition but for its democratic future as well.
Deepanshu Mohan is a Professor of Economics, Dean, IDEAS, and Director, Centre for New Economics Studies. He is a Visiting Professor at London School of Economics and an Academic Visiting Fellow to AMES, University of Oxford.
