Congress's story of last one decade runs around UPA 1 & 2, where plus 200 seats reduced to below fifty in last one decade that made the writer Chetan Bhagat to call for fixing the revival of Congress coming out from the self made collapse into a dithering mess. He argued that since Congress and BJP are the only two plausible national alternatives right now, we must keep things competitive between them rather than make any one party feel indispensable or invincible.
Bhagat wrote : " For all the party’s sins, one wonders: do they even deserve any advice to resurrect themselves? One, they won’t listen and two, don’t they somewhat deserve the mess they are in? Well, there are reasons to fix Congress. One, a healthy and reasonably strong opposition is only good for a democracy. In fact, even the BJP could suffer if the Congress is too weak. For it is when politicians fear no competition that they become smug, arrogant and make irreparable mistakes."
But still he presented a five quick steps that the party can take to regain a certain amount of lost ground as : One, it needs to publicly fire some party heavyweights. Many of their senior leaders became the public face of the party’s arrogance and corruption,at least in perception if not reality. They will probably never win another election and if they stick around, they won’t let others win too.
Two, make Rahul say sorry. No glibness, no cleverness, no attempts to say something deep and profound. He has to apologise for not acting when he needed to. For trying to be too clever and keeping mum (no pun intended) during scams.
Three, pick on genuine shortcomings of the new government. The BJP government will make mistakes or fall short of expectations, and the Congress has to spot these opportunities and react to them with grace in a fair and constructive manner.
Four, promote and give power to a few new faces. Talent exists in the Congress, but it is valued little. The insecurity about stealing the limelight from the family is so high, that there are virtually no Congress stars.
Five, tell us how things will be different. What has changed in the Congress that a CWG or 2G will not, and cannot happen again? How will we be sure that arrogance won't be tolerated in the party? How are we sure that Rahul is going to be making himself chamcha-proof? Unless these questions are answered with real actions, trust will never be regained.
INDIA HONEST agrees that more than a century old party Congress should must be revived, but for this it must join the national interest serving party platform. But the present leadership lacks that temperament as it has become more of a power hungry, power grabbing party of few greedy leaders.
Now the Congress party has been left to become neither a national party nor a pure regional party. It can now be just equated to the power greedy Arvind Kejariwal's Aam Admi party .
The crucial first step Congress needs to take steps to make it all state party, and for that it need to revive its own base on all 544 parliament seats, by that throwing away most of the power sharing allies, that are just assembled only to secure power and that crucial shortcoming has downgraded the party in most of the states.
Moreover time has come when India has to think deeply if the multi and small regional party system has caused serious harm to the national unity and optimum service to the interest of nation. Here Congress's revival on that line will do a big favour to nation in long term, as the huge differing voices on regional lines has effectively slowed down our capacity of administration of India in national and international forum.
Again as regards to the recovery of Congress, which is dependent on another crucial aspect that Congress has to change its outlook : from a party made only to rule India anyhow or somehow to a party working for true national interest and for this it has to draw a line that when and where it will opt to rule or when to wait for further time.
It must not wait only because it lacks the numbers but it must wait because it lacks strength of right leaders and basic organisational strength. Once it change its stance from a power grabbing party to people interest serving party, most of the undesirable leaders within it will leave and give way to other capable new leaders .
The last and crucial step needed is what their own leader Jagmit Singh Brar has said recently that the top leaders should give way to fresh leaders upstaged from the ground level in order to build a national party of all state leaders and not a Gandhi only party.