I’m pleased to share that my new op-ed, “Congress’s biggest problem is not the BJP. It is their own operating system”, has just been published in ThePrint, one of India’s leading e-news portals.
The article began as a response to Shekhar Gupta’s sharp column on the “Congress-sized hole” in Indian politics and his call for humility within the party. While I broadly agree with his diagnosis, my piece argues that humility alone will not save the Congress. The real crisis lies in its outdated operating system – the way it thinks, structures alliances, deploys resources and engages with institutions between elections.
I propose that the Congress needs to move from short-term, transactional alliances to long-term, clearly negotiated partnerships with regional parties. In several key states, it should be prepared to play the junior partner in Vidhan Sabha politics while seeking a larger share in Lok Sabha contests. Rather than spreading itself thin in unwinnable seats, the party must focus ruthlessly on marginal constituencies where a small swing can tilt the outcome.
Equally important, politics cannot be reduced to yatras and election-time campaigns. The party needs continuous ground-level work and a professional legal strategy: from systematic intervention in electoral roll revisions to filing well-prepared election petitions wherever it believes irregularities or corrupt practices have influenced the result.
These themes are developed in detail in the full article. I would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to read it and share your thoughts.Feel free to leave your comments either under the article on ThePrint or right here on Substack (website or app). Your feedback is invaluable in sharpening and deepening this conversation about the future of the Congress and, by extension, Indian democracy itself.