 So, are we now in the final phase of a Congress Mukhbhara? Does the Congress party have any future at all? Can it ever replace the BJP as the party of rule? A party which is dominant decides the agenda of all other parties, all other parties react to it. Like all parties do to the BJP right now. Remember for large part of its history, India's history, the Congress was the absolutely dominant party. Everyone else was fighting the Congress, was reacting to the Congress. And the Congress couldn't be budged from the center. In a sense, the BJP has occupied that space and what that has done is that it has completely decimated the Congress. The Congress is virtually nowhere and look at what has happened even in the states where it was supposed to have been able to give a strong fight. Punjab, incumbent, thrown out, an absolute sweep by the up, look at Uttarakhand and Goa where they were supposed to have had a fighting chance to form a government. They couldn't come even close to the BJP. The vote share was far behind the BJP. And of course in Uttar Pradesh, they fought it alone. Priyanka Gandhi camped there, spent many, many days trying to probably convince the not just voters but even Harkada, the Congress party workers to enthuse them to work. Nothing happened, just less than 2.5% vote share for the Congress party and two seats but no real impact on the ground. The Congress party therefore now is present in only a few states, if you look at it. And in a sense, it still has the hangover of being the national party, that we are everywhere, we have the right to dictate terms to others. Whether it is Bihar, whether it is UP. If we are not given the majority of seats to fight, then we will not go into an alliance. It still has that hangover of being the Sarkar, the Maibaap of all other parties. Whereas it actually now is the weakest link in all of the opposition in a sense because it really has no regional presence in that sense. And other regional parties are able to hold their own against the BJP which is now the ubiquitous supreme national party. Except for the South. Now what does the Congress really need to survive or even to remain in a decent position for the next 15-20 years? It has to focus on the states where it still has a presence. That's number one. Number two, it has to define itself in contradiction from other parties. Now you look at a party like UP, it comes and says, we don't really care about religion if there is a bit of Communism here and there. We are going to turn a blind eye. We only look at development of the very standard capitalist kind but with welfare. We want schools, we want hospitals, we want good roads, we will give you cheap electricity and we are relatively corruption free. We are honest and we work hard. That's UP. A great message for the urban middle class, the urban law middle class and maybe with a certain, after a few years, maybe able to make inroads into rural India. If you look at something like the Samajwadi party, the Samajwadi party clearly has a position that it is a party which is trying to rebuild the social justice platform which was the Mandir platform. And it is a strongly secular party in the sense that it believes in protecting the rights of the minorities in a state like Uttar Pradesh. You take something like the DMK, strong old progressive, druvid politics as they call it. You take the left very defined ideology strong in Kerala, weak in other places. The Trinamool Congress has defined itself more or less in as a reaction to the left. It might have to find some space for itself as to what it wants to define itself as. But the Congress party literally has no USP, no brand, nothing to tell people that we are going to do this. The only thing that they can say that we used to do this. We used to do this. The first few prime ministers were all ours and we did this and look, we did so well. If you did so well, why did the people throw you out? Now that is the number two point. Number three is of course the question of leadership. Does Congress need a leadership change? Do the Gandhi's need to go? And finally number four, how can the Congress really fight elections if those who fund elections, those who you need money to fight elections, those who fund elections, those who control the media are largely inimical to you and you yourself have returned them into your enemies. So these are the four key things that the Congress has to deal with. Number one, let's take the question of strength and presence in places. The Congress has literally and for years wasted time in states where it cannot do well. Uttar Pradesh, no chance. It's just a complete waste of time spending so much of your time in a state where you have no presence. It's just 2%. There's no way you can be there. It is better to let your party, local party function there, have an alliance with a strong regional party which is aligned against the BJP. Let them give you one or two, two, three seats, whatever they give you, tell them, give us this, we'll fight this and rest of the time we will support you naturally and if we make it to government, we'll ensure that you get a participation in the central government. That is the kind of alliance the Congress needs not just in Uttar Pradesh where it has wasted, Priyanka Gandhi has wasted a lot of time which he could have actually spent on other states. She's wasted it on Uttar Pradesh which will give no dividends to the Congress party. Even Bihar, there are some pockets where the Congress party is strong but rest of it, it is just a complete waste of time for the Congress party to look at these states. They cannot do well. There's no way for it to end. And that's a lot of time, a lot of area, a lot of space which it cannot get anything from. It's just not worth it. It should just abandon it and move on to the rest of India. There are some states where it can only win in alliance. One of these of course is Tamil Nadu where the dominant parties are DMK and AI or DMK and the old days the Congress used to switch between the two. Now for the past few, almost a decade, it has been two decades broadly. It has aligned broadly with the DMK steadily and the DMK has won. So the Congress party's role has to be to ensure that the DMK, its alliance with the DMK stays strong. It can support the DMK. It's carder can strengthen the DMK so that AI or DMK does not win and strengthen the NDA. That is the Congress party's role elsewhere. It has Rajasthan, Gujarat, it has lost Punjab and it seems that it's very difficult for it to retain it because AI will build on that for several years. It has Uttarakhand where it can fight. It has Karnataka, it has Telangana. It has very little, it can find some way to participate in Andhra Pradesh. It has to give up on West Bengal. Again West Bengal is something where they can't do anything. There's no point in wasting time. Better to have an alliance with Mamta Banerjee and get it out of the way. Let her give you a few seats. Alright, there's a Sam. Focus on that. So look at the states where you can Haryana. These are the states where the Congress party has to spend all its energies and forget about these two large states which need to be covered in a lot of detail which cause a lot of heartburn to the Congress party. A lot of people say, and that brings us to this point, that a lot of people say that if you don't have a presence in UP, you cannot form a government at the center. But that is not necessarily true because if you remember, Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister in 2004 with the Congress having just nine seats in Uttar Pradesh. So it is possible to actually have an alliance with UP parties to have a strong support from the South, have a strong presence in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and make it to the center which you cannot do if you put all your energies into what is the core Hindi bet. That is out of bounds for the Congress. Alright, now the question of leadership. Can the Congress party do without the Gandhi's? And my view is that actually it cannot because the Gandhi's are the only national brand they have. It is all very well for the Delhi Liberal Chaturati to talk about the Sachin pilots and oh look, so and so has gone, this person has gone, that person has left. All these young people who could have let the party or look at Shashi Tharoor, he could have let the party, they have no national presence. It is only the Gandhi's who have because of the extreme depth of support for dynastic politics in a sense in India, that is the real politic in India, that is what is unfortunately what the Congress parties only strength is at this moment. So they cannot do without the Gandhi's. But what the Gandhi's need to do is to clearly identify what they stand for. They cannot move from one topic to another and only cater to the liberal intellectuals who have certain pet projects who believe in certain things and say I stand for this, I stand for that, which is only great for Twitter and for those and that echo chamber. The Congress party has to clearly identify what it stands for. Does it stand for free market privatization? Does it stand for liberalization? Or does it stand for increased role of the state in the economy? Does it believe in the role of big capital as we seem to be seeing in the case of the BJP, where it seems to be supporting big capital and monopoly capital, this government, or does it believe in supporting the state, supporting small capital, MSMEs? Can it organize MSMEs who have clearly been badly hit first by demonetization, that's by GST? Can it take up their causes in different states? Be there on the ground for them, play the role of the opposition, not to just win elections, but to put pressure on the administration to get concessions for them, agitate on the ground, can they do that? Can they collect money which is absolutely essential, funds from MSMEs, from small businesses, can they do that to fight elections? Can they look at those businesses which have been affected by the formation of a few monopolies, few families getting everything? Can they tap into them and say, look, we believe in better, more open competition? We oppose monopolies and therefore we need your help. We will help you, we will represent you, we need your help. The Congress party is really not a socialist party, it's not really a left party. It is a centrist party with a slightly leftward tilt in the sense of whatever the Sondhya Gandhi's NSE did, but the Manmol Singh government was hardcore right-wing on when it came to the economy. So therefore the Congress party needs to rethink how does it get funds, how does it capture the media, how does it create a different discourse, how does it find an alternate space? Its target has to be about 100 seats in Lok Sabha. It's very difficult for it to cross that and it should understand that and that means it will have to be the junior partner. In most places, in most states, it has to be a junior partner to get a few seats here and there. It has to give up its grand-elucent dreams of being the BJP again or the grand old party once again. Those days are gone. Social conditions in India no longer support what the Congress stands for. So the Congress has to be a party which will become a bulwark for a coalition of federal forces. So the Congress has to be the cement for federalism and that's its only future. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick. Like us, subscribe to us and do share this video.