2024: The Challenge Is The Strategy for Congress Now

Raipur is the venue where the grand session of the Congress party is going to be held on 24th of this month. The session will witness the participation of one thousand eight hundred members of the Congress Committee along with about fifteen thousand delegates. The agenda is crystal clear -the strategy for the 2024 general elections will be chalked out in this convention.

The first point of this strategy is obviously, to unite all opposition parties against the BJP under the leadership of the Congress party. The same was done in 1967 with the initiative of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. During that time also all the anti-Congress parties had succeeded in getting united.  Neither the personal ambitions of the leaders came in the way nor did the barriers of ideology arise against the much-needed unity during that time.

The unity definitely achieved success in some Indian states, but how long could governments of such a combo last! This experience was seen in 1977 also when the governments of Morarji Desai and Charan Singh were formed after the Emergency era. Even more bitter accident happened during the governments of Vishwanath Pratap Singh and Chandrashekhar.

The side effects of this unnatural unity of the opposition parties have been so painful that there are very thin chances that the people of India will be influenced by this artificial unity and would want to oust Modi in 2024. Apart from this, the role played by Emergency and Bofors at the time of previous alliances, no such issue has so far come into the hands of the opposition.

As far as Adani’s case is concerned, the opposition has not yet been able to give it the shape of Bofors. Apart from this, today the opposition has neither Lohia, Jayaprakash, Chandrashekhar, or VP Singh. There is no such leader against Modi. A little bit of possibility can be seen in Nitish to some extent, but why would Congress party allow anyone to stand before them.

For Congress, Rahul Gandhi is the biggest leader in India. But no significant national or provincial party in the country is ready to accept Rahul as its leader. Rahul has certainly gone through some self-education through Bharat-Jodo Yatra, but Congress workers also have a dilemma about Rahul. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh sounds wise when he says that unity of opposition is not possible without Congress party, because even today Congress workers are active in every city and every village of the country.

Even as the opposition thinks, the Modi government has not been able to bring any revolutionary and fundamental change in the country, the government still has its influence on the people of the country. Unfortunately for a historical party like Congress, it has no capable leader nor any attractive policy.

See the misery, Congress does not even have any fake slogan like ‘Garibi Hatao’ today. Though, there is no dearth of experienced leaders in Congress, but if the real owners of Congress party take a step back, put themselves in the role of guide, bring internal democracy in the party and hand over the reins of the party to experienced leaders, then they can come up with an alternative strategy. If prepared for such positivity, Congress can avoid being destroyed this time.