The 3 Mistakes of My Life by Congress Bha'go't

I am Congress. I need no introduction and every Indian now knows me (for all the wrong reasons these days) thanks to my blind leaders who couldn’t see the wave which turned out to be tsunami that almost destroyed me. I am also known as the Grand Old Party (GoP) of India. I have ruled for almost 55 years out of the 67 years of an independent India.

The election results this year have ruined my career. I won in just 44 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, drew a blank in 7 of the 28 states and failed to win more than 10 seats in any state. I am now relegated to the position of a national regional party. I can’t even claim to have a leader of the Opposition as I have not scored the minimum requirement of 54 seats to do so. My vote share in spite of all the minority politics that my leaders played got pegged at 19.3%.  This is my worst ever performance and I am deeply saddened.

On introspection in the last 48 hours, I couldn't help attributing my failure to these three mistakes that paved the way for my worst ever poll debacle.

Mistake 1:  Family rule

After the assassination of the charming Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, Sonia Gandhi (born as Advige Antonia Albina Maino in Italy) became my President in 1998. She was initially reluctant to enter the political arena but many of my leaders wanted Gandhi family in the front so that they could get votes through the great Gandhi legacy resulting in complete family domination in the following years. These leaders who were like court jesters promoted their own vested interests by keeping Gandhi family in a false world that kept them insulated from the ground reality. They made them feel that they were living in the days of aristocracy. Adding fuel to fire, some of the family members took advantage of their position and made millions in a short span of time through political manipulations especially in the state of Haryana. Instead of creating a completely democratic set-up, autocratic rule prevailed resulting in my slow deterioration as a party.

Mistake 2: Remotely Controlled ‘Silent’ PM

My actual troubles started since 2004 when I was voted to power along with my alliance partners United Progressive Alliance (UPA) as I did not get a clear majority in this age of coalition politics.

UPA selected Dr.Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister consecutively for two terms, in 2004 and 2009. Agreed he is a very humble, intelligent and a great economist but never contested an election for the Lower House. He has been a Rajya Sabha member for the last 23 years and was brought into lime light by one my most deserving leaders P.V.Narasimha Rao under whom he served as the Finance Minister and gave a fillip to a liberalized India in 1991. The reforms introduced by him gave India an edge and the world started looking up to India as an investment destination.

The so called leaders of mine placed him in the front end as a PM but planted a chip in his mouth and gave the remote that controlled that chip to my President.  Whenever he wanted to speak up, the mute button was pressed leaving no scope for him to do so. The result of this DEADLY SILENCE led to innumerable scams in which crores of rupees of public money was looted by the scam oriented ministers of UPA and ultimately weakened me on all fronts. The undervaluation of the position of PM by my own party men and using him as a robot to further their vested interests not only earned my PM a bad name but put me on weak wicket.

Mistake 3 – Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and formation of Telengana

The third biggest mistake I did in connivance with my alliance partners was bifurcating the state of Andhra Pradesh, the state which always stood by me at all times. The people of AP were so loyal to me that I could lose elections anywhere but not in Andhra. Supported strongly by my President, some ‘leaders’( or political dealers) like Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Sushil Kumar Shind, Kapil Sibal and Digvijaya Singh, who were more foxy than human, worked incessantly to deepen the rift among the peace loving, Telugu speaking people. The manner in which the bifurcation was done caused severe damage to me and hurt the Telugus’ sentiment. They taught us a tough lesson by decimating me in Seemandhra. All this was done on the assumption of winning a few 'assured' seats in Telangana to see my 'young' Vice President as the PM.

But alas! See what happened in the end. I, once a national party of stature, now stand relegated to the level of less than a regional party. I am not sure, if there is any specialist who can bring back my lost glory. I do not know if people have the patience to give me a chance to recover.

In the absence of any opportunity to recoup, I can only wish that the present BJP government commits the same mistakes as my leaders did. But with Narendra Modi at the helm of affairs, I doubt if I would be given another chance.

Till then, hail Narendra Damodardas Modi, the man who made history by winning a comfortable majority to rule India and got rid of coalition governments after almost 30 years.