 Ashok Gehlot's rebellion is actually much more serious than it looks, because it kind of marks a collapse of the old Congress system. Why am I saying that? Because the Congress party can't do without the Gandhi family at the top. But at the same time, Ashok Gehlot, who was seen as a Gandhi family loyalist, when he rebels, what does that show? That means that the Gandhi family has lost control over even the most loyal amongst its rank and file. And that is a huge problem and a sign of the collapse of the Congress party. Why? Let's take a bit of a detour into what some would call political theory, but don't get intimidated by that, but just think about it. If you were studying political science in high school or even in college, you would be told that the democracy actually runs on individual interests. Citizens think of their own interests and when that interest coincides with the interests of several others, they come together to form a pressure group or a political party which would represent their interests. And if the majority of citizens have the same interests, then that political party forms the government. And because individual interests are fickle, they change, they move from one place to another, individuals might switch allegiance from one political party to another. And when a large number of citizens do that, what happens? Another political party comes to power and that has been broadly what has been called the party system, the two-party or the multi-party system. A one-party system of course is different because then that is not a representative electoral democracy. The Congress party for a long time in India's history had literally represented a one-party system. Why? Because first it came out of the national movement itself. It was a party of consensus which emerged, but that was not the reason why it ruled for so long. The reason why it ruled for so long is because it was in government. This is a crucial thing to understand. Because in the India of 1947, citizens were not people moved by individual interests. Their interests coalesced or were located around the family, around the clan, around caste, around the village cluster and they were represented by their own strongman. And I am using the word strongman advisedly because most were men and not women. What happened was that these strongmen formed alliances across villages at the district level, went up even further to the state level linguistic groups and these alliances when they formed a majority, that majority decided who was in power and that is the bottom-up idea of how power was distributed or how power created a chain in India of the 1950s, 60s and 70s but actually that is only one part of the story. In reality, if you are representing a caste group or a village, your strength or your power determines on how much you can get from the government, from the state and therefore the state or the government actually determined how these power groups would be aligned and this is where the Congress had its advantage. This is where the prime minister from the Congress became a larger than life figure. So Nehru became popular because he was the prime minister. He decided and determined how the state's benefits would go accrue to individual social groups and that is how the Congress party became this power-oriented party, this governmental party which represented governmental power. Now of course every time it was unable to create this umbrella coalition of all interests, all group interests then it lost power in local areas and regional groups came to power. The problem was that often these regional groups are only parties of pressure. They determined how much pressure they could put on the center, on the authority and they were not really parties of rule in that sense. Congress was the only one which was a party of consensus, party which ruled. From the 90s that scenario changed and from 2014 the Congress has not been in power and that is a crucial thing. And when the Congress is not in power it is unable to hold on to the party because no one from the bottom up gains anything from the Congress party. This is very unlike other political parties in India which emerge out of being parties of pressure, whether that party of pressure represents trading groups, whether that party of pressure represents a religious community, a caste or a linguistic group or a regional aspiration. So all parties of pressure which kind of put pressure and made the Congress what it was, it assimilated all these entities within itself, these parties of pressure were also kind of safety valves because it made the Congress react to these things which were coming up from various directions and compassed them within itself. As soon as it has gone out of power and has remained out of power in various states and at the center it can no longer hold on to these various leaders, these local leaders who actually benefited from the patron-client relationship, this entire chain which the government and the Congress had created. And now therefore those who are in power locally like Ashok Gelot has his own system of patron-client relationships and has his own support base which is not dependent on the Congress high command of the Gandhi family any longer and that is where the Gandhi family faces its biggest crisis and the Congress faces its biggest crisis because local leaders are rebelling. They say that we have local power, you don't have governmental power to give us anything for us to benefit but at the same time the Congress party does not have an ideology or a charismatic leader other than the Gandhis themselves who have the brand associated with being in power, a brand of a family of Prime Ministers and this is the dilemma for the Congress party. The Gandhis cannot be removed, they are always going to be at the top of the Congress and the Gandhis on the other hand because they have not been in power for so long are losing control over the rank and file of the Congress. That's the show today, keep watching NewsClick, like this video, share it as well and do subscribe to our channel.