Is it too much, too late for Congress?

Sonia Gandhi's assertion to the Congress Working Committee that she is a "full-time president" has come a bit late. It may sound music to the loyalists of Gandhi family but the damage has already been done. The core issue that needs to be still resolved is who will be the party president when the organisational elections would be held next year.

The family loyalists have already started resorting to the sycophancy by saying that Rahul Gandhi should take over. Rahul had got a great opportunity and if had really worked his strategies with his young team effectively, the party would have continued to be a political force and an effective opposition at the national level which in fact is the need of the hour. But that did not happen. Even now he does not appear to sure of whether to take the responsibility of reinvention of Congress party.

It appears that the failure of the Congress party to set its house in order for so long has already caused serious damage and caused more problems. Punjab where BJP failed to make inroads in the last assembly elections is now in turmoil. The decision of making Navjot Sidhu the PCC president led to a situation where the Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had to resign.

It is said that the decision to elevate Sidhu to the position of PCC president was that of Priyanka. Following resignation of Amarinder, Rahul anointed Charanjit Singh Channi but his strategy of playing the Dalit Sikh card seems to have failed and the party has landed in greater trouble. The State Congress has become a playground and the party is likely to lose the political game because of its hit wicket.

Congress party has multiple challenges ahead of it. Its State units are in a very bad shape and in most States they have become too weak. The grand old party is pinning its hopes on the recent Lakhimpur incident where some farmers were moved down by the vehicle allegedly driven by the son of a union minister.

But if one examines the political situation across the country, people have stopped reacting even to such serious and ghastly incidents. That is the impact of the great strategy of buying voters in the form of freebies by all ruling parties including BJP across the country.

On the other hand, many non-Congress parties like the Aam Aadmi party, the Trinamool Congress are expanding their political base. Even the TRS is now following the same route though all of them are also family-based parties.

This time they don't want to be tagged on to the Congress and there is every possibility that the Congress may be one of the opposition parties fighting against the BJP in the next general elections. The grand old party which should have consolidated its base had failed badly. They seem to have become out of date and non-willing to adapt themselves to changing trends in politics. They still prefer to remain self-intoxicated.

The BJP too cannot call itself to be a different party anymore. In the past seven years, it has undergone a total transformation and has been moving away from being a democratic party to autocratic style of functioning.

If Congress is to stage a political comeback, it needs to reinvent itself, rework its strategies, assume leadership and get into the public arena on all important issues and take on the BJP.