The party is over: why the Congress is in terminal decline

The Congress party faces “disintegration and eventual demise” owing to loss of political and electoral “competitiveness”, which has reduced it to a shadow of the pan-national “umbrella party” that it once was, according to a study published in an international journal.

A political recovery for the Congress is “extremely difficult”, if not impossible, given the party’s erosion, as reflected in electoral statistics down the years, point out scholars Adnan Farooqui and E Sridharan of the Jamia Millia Islamia and the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for Advanced Study of India, in their paper ‘Can Umbrella Parties Survive? The Decline of the Indian National Congress’. The paper has been published in the latest volume of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics .

The “disintegration and eventual demise by further splits and loss of social base” is a very real possibility for the diminished Congress, the study notes. Even if it revives, the Congress will not emerge as an “umbrella party” but only as a “broad, left-of-the-centre coalition of the disadvantaged,” it adds.

Having lost a majority of the social groups to regional parties and the BJP –– which has also cornered the middle class and “aspirational” voter –– the Grand Old Party now mostly depends on a shrunken vote bank of minorities, and a section of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, the study notes.

Signs of the Congress’ decline and loss of “competitiveness” abound in statistics. The party has not won 95 Lok Sabha constituencies since 1989; another 17 since 1991; 27 more since 1996; an additional 11 since 1998; and seven more since 1999.

Under the first-past-the-post system (as prevails in India), a party is considered “competitive” (that is, have a chance of winning and forming a government) if it is in the first or the second position in terms of vote share.

“If it is in the third or a worse rank, it becomes significantly more difficult to win,” the authors say.

Between 1967 and 1984, the Congress slipped to third or worse place in only three States, overwhelmingly retaining the second place even where it lost. But post-1989, it slipped to third or worse position in four major States — UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the scholars explain.

In 2014, the Congress slipped to third or worse position in 10 States (including the Union Territory of Delhi), effectively becoming “uncompetitive” in 320 Lok Sabha seats.

Even the “partial recoveries” of the Congress in 2004 and 2009 came about because it recognised its weaknesses and forged pre-electoral coalitions. “It was a victory while in some ways it was an admission of weakness,” the study says.

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