SPECIAL ARTICLE

Congress in the Times of the post-Congress Era

Surviving sans Politics
Suhas Palshikar

Behind the dramatic demise of the Congress in 2014 is a

long history dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. The
Congress has often chosen to ignore those deeper
reasons for its recent decline. Similarly, the failure of the
Congress as also its possible strengths become evident
only when we disaggregate the decline of the party
state-wise. This leads to a curious but useful pointer
the party may have to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party
in states where it is locked in a bipolar contest with the
BJP in order to create political space for itself. Above all,
this paper argues that more than the leadership issue,
the factors responsible for the decline of the Congress
are the organisational neglect and complete abdication
of politics. The paper then maps the challenges and
limitations facing the Congress, particularly in its third
life, the phase of survival.

Suhas Palshikar (suhaspalshikar@gmail.com) teaches at the Department

of Politics and Public Administration, Savitribai Phule Pune University,
Pune.
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ot many political parties in India have the burden of

carrying a long history. The Indian National Congress
(Congress) is one such party that has so far always
remained central to calculations of competitive politics in
India. Its role as the ruling party for a very long time (194777,
1980-89, 1991-96 and finally 200414, amounting to over 55
years of independent Indias existence of 67 years) makes it
distinct from most other parties in India. While some continuity marks the long life of the Congress, in reality, the party has
gone through many lives. This makes it difficult to analyse
the partythe Congress space in Indias politics (roughly
speaking, an accommodative, centrist space that is tolerant
of plurality and contestation) and what goes in the name of
the Congress often get confused with each other. To wit,
todays Congress itself may not know what it is. It talks of
GandhiNehruGandhi as icons but rarely manages to clarify
to itself and to its fast dwindling followers what it stands for in
todays context.
Todays Congress is the third life of the party. From an early
post-independence party of government and development
(life of hegemony), the Congress entered a more complicated
phase of internal troubles and stiff opposition from outside
which characterised its second life (life of confrontation) and
then entered a third life when it was no more a guaranteed
ruler and had to operate within a political milieu characterised as the decline of the Congress (life of survival). During
the first two lives, various ideological positions were shaped
and identified mostly with reference to the Congress. Its central
role in Indias government and politics led to the emergence of
non-Congress politics. So much so, that till the 1970s and
even into the 1980s, opposition in the context of Indias
politics practically meant parties opposed to the Congress.
From non-congressism of the late 1960s to the slogan of
Congress-mukt Bharat during the 16th Lok Sabha election in
2014, the party continued to be at the centre of competitive
politics despite many ups and downs. All through its postindependence existence, breakaway groups routinely named
themselves as Congress with some appellation or suffix.
These nomenclatures are not merely attempts to cling to the
historical legacy associated with the Congress Party; they
also indicate awareness and existence of the Congress space.
And despite the existence of such a space, the political context of the late 1980s and 1990s presents us with an entirely
different set of issues and concerns and these have produced a
very different Congress. Since 1989, the party has had to cope
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SPECIAL ARTICLE

with and fight for existence in the midst of more substantial

multiparty competition. This transition from a party that
shaped the politics of the country to a party that is now
shaped by politics around it has been rather difficult and
painful for the Congress. So much so, that both in the mid1990s and later in the mid-tens of the new century, doubts
have been expressed about the capacity of the party to
survive. Elections to the 16th Lok Sabha (2014) have almost
confirmed these doubts.
This paper begins by discussing the electoral downslide of
the Congress and then proceeds to explain it in terms of the
social bases of the party (Sections 1 and 2). Section 3 focuses
on the political geography of the electoral decimation of the
Congress. The larger issue, however, is what the partys downfall signifies in terms of the major limitations that it faces.
Section 4 seeks to map these limitations.

the shaping of the hegemony of the party. The Nehru factor

does not mean just the personality but the ideology and strategy of rulership adopted by and identified with him. It also
means that there was nothing that made the Congress invincible and as soon as the Nehru factor wore out, the logic of
competitive politics began to have an effect. This argument
suggests that the logic of competitive politics would, sooner
or later undermine the apparent invincibility of the dominant party. Even during Nehrus own lifetime, the vote share
of the Congress declined between 1957 and 1962 (Table 1) and
the capacity to convert votes into seats remained stagnant
(Figure 1). His departure was naturally bound to have adverse
consequences on both these counts.
Figure 1: Congress Seat-Vote Multiplier, 195285
2

1 Electoral Downslide

The Congress is historically known not only for electoral dominance and single-party rule but also for its hegemonic role in
Indias political life. However, such hegemony can be shaped
or sustainedonly on the strong foundations of electoral
victories. A review of the Congresss electoral history would
make it abundantly clear why the late 1980s happen to be a
critical period for the party. Of course, in 1977, the Congress
was defeated for the first time at the all-India level, but it
bounced back in 1980 with a clear majority and then remained
in power for almost a decade. That return of the Congress and
subsequent developments following the assassination of Indira
Gandhi postponed the decline of the party. But that postponement also indicated that the Congress in 1977, even in its
defeat, had adequate resilience to win power despite being
discredited by the Emergency and despite a split in the party
following the elections of 1977. On the other hand, in 1989, the
party had lost that resilience and therefore, it failed to make
an impressive comeback though it did manage to come to
power in 1991.
There are three explanatory grids that help us understand
the decline of the Congress. The first is the inevitable logic of
competitive politics. It can be argued that once the framework
of competitive politics is put in place, historical legacy can only
postpone the rise of real Table 1: Congress Performance in
competition and multiparty Lok Sabha Elections, 195285
Turnout ENP/v Vote Share Seats/Total
electionswhat one work
1952
45.6 4.5
45.0
363/488
describes as Learning to
1957
46.6
3.9
47.8
371/494
Lose (Friedman and Wong
1962
55.4 4.4
44.7
361/494
2008). The Congress could
1967
60.9 5.2
40.8 283/520
postpone the effect of that
1971
55.3 4.6
43.9
352/518
logic in the immediate post- 1977 60.5 3.4 34.5 154/542
independence period by 1980 56.9 4.2 42.7 353/542
combining the factor of his- 1985 64.1 4.0 48.0 415/542
torical legacy with the factor ENP/v is the effective number of parties in
of vote share calculated as per the
of leadership. The Nehru terms
formula developed by Taagepera and Shugart
factor made the difference (1989). N=1/pi2 where pi is the fractional
of i-th party and stand for the
in the electoral arena and share
summation of overall components.
also greatly contributed to Source: For Tables 1 and 2, Data Unit CSDS.
40

0
1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

Second, the rise of Indira Gandhi as a charismatic leader

adopting populist political measures ensured simultaneously
that the party would withstand the pressures of democratic
competition in the short run (196777), but finally succumb
due to its organisational weakness which also emanated from
the same factor. In hindsight, we can now see how the downfall of the Congress was destined due to the historic victory
of Indira Gandhi in 1971. That victory was almost completely
devoid of any organisational strength or network. A new edifice
emerged in which there was no organisational linkages
between the top leader and the voters. This development
decimated the strengths of the party in most states of India.
Once the charisma wanes or once the charismatic personality
disappears from the scene, such an edifice begins to crumble
rather easily and in a precipitious manner. Post-1985, this is
what happened to the Congress. Rajiv Gandhi did not have the
charisma of Indira Gandhi nor did he inherit a strong
organisation on which he could rely.
Third, as the crises of the political economy developed
through the 1970s, the party suffered a deficit of social
bases. Its strategy of organising the Green Revolution that
brought it the support of the newly prosperous farming
communities in North India helped it only temporarily and
soon the newly prosperous peasant proprietary classes
became disenchanted with the party because they were given
an inadequate share in power. This happened most notably in
the case of the backward peasantry communitylater identified as Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In a sense, this development resulted from the partys own strategy. The Congress
had adopted a strategy not to overemphasise social cleavages
and instead make room for all social sections. But this
strategy was fraught with the challenge of power sharing
between the dominant upper caste communities and the
newly mobilised aspiring communities. Congress could not
give adequate share to the latter nor could it convince the
former for a power sharing arrangement. This put enormous
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pressure on its catch-all strategy leading to its decline in the

post-1989 period.

Figure 2: Congress Seat-Vote Multiplier, 19892014

1.5
1

Limited Gains from Indira Gandhi Strategy

0.5

All these tensions and strains are evident in the politics of the
Congress during and since the 1970s. Indira Gandhi did
0
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
2020
attempt, in a very tentative manner, cleavage-based politics in
Source: For Figures 1 and 2, calculated by author.
the 1970s and combined it with her populism, it did produce
dramatic dividends. However, as later events were to show, show that Congress received massive and almost uniform supthese gains were only very temporary and the Congress victory port from all caste groups in 1962 (p 195).2 Thus, the first decade
of 1980 and 198485 was very much devoid of social policy and a half of democratic politics in India witnessed the rise of a
and focused social bases. Instead, those two electoral victories catch-all political party in the form of the Congress opposed by
were contingent and contextual; they did not have any long- politics of social cleavages from both ends of the leftright
term strategy for the survival of the party. This superficiality spectrum. The Congress during this period chose not to idenwas more evident in the outcome of the 1991 election once the tify with any one social group. Its policies as party in power,
cohering factor of leadership had disappeared. It is in this sense too, were more accommodative than biased in favour of any
that the Congress came to be associated with a dependence on one group. The broader planks of nation building, unity, selfreliant industrial development and large-scale welfare measleadership emerging only from one family.
Tables 1 and 2 report the performance of the Congress in ures combined with selective state ownership, produced a conthe parliamentary elections from 1952 to 2014. The party was sensus which earned for the party successive victories in which
often criticised in the times of its dominance that it received most social sections were more or less equal partners. The
undue advantage of the electoral system (of simple plurality, large mass base of the party, popularity of its top leader and its
that is, first past the post or FPTP) in which a disproportion- capacity to produce a larger consensus constituted the defining
ately higher proportion of seats went to the party in comparison elements of what Rajni Kothari later labelled as the Congress
to its vote share. Known as the vote multiplier,1 this factor system (Kothari 1964).
explains the larger victory for the party than it deserved;
because it polled votes much below the 50% mark and yet won Erosion in 1967
seats much above the half way mark! This advantage is clearly This mass base eroded for the first time in 1967. First, the new
seen in Figure 1. However, in Figure 2, the advantage almost voters or the relatively younger voters began to get restless and
completely disappears. Therefore, rather than Table 2: Congress Performance in
were less attracted to the party that was by then
looking at the favourable multiplier as undue Lok Sabha Elections, 19892014
in power for two decades. As the election study
Turnout ENP/v Vote Share Seats
advantage emanating from the system, it
of 1967 shows, while the Congresss overall
(%)
(%)
would be useful if we saw it as an indication of 1989
61.9 4.8
39.5
197 support declined between 1962 and 1967, re55.9
5.1
36.6
244 spondents below the age of 25 voted much
the real dominance of the party and, thus, 1991
57.9
7.1
28.8
140 less for the Congresswith a gap of 7 perthe disappearance of that advantage in the 1996
1998
62.0 6.9
25.8
141
1990s equally emphatically indicates that the
centage points between their support to the
1999
60.0 6.7
28.3
114
Congress and the overall votes polled by the
party had lost its dominant position.
2004
58.1
7.6
26.5
145
3
2009
58.2
7.7
28.6
206 party in the survey. But it was not only the
2 Narrowing Social Base
2014
66.4
7.0
19.3
44 somewhat expected disenchantment of the
younger voters that marked 1967; the support
In the first two parliamentary elections, the Total seats 543 for the entire period.
Congress drew support from across almost all social sections. for the Congress among various communities lacked any strong
This was mainly a function of its being the legatee of the inde- pattern. While the Congress did get more support (Heath and
pendence movement and the mass character of Indias independ- Yadav 2010: 196) among Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled
ence movement. This legacy gave the Congress its catch-all or Tribes (STs), it received less support among Muslims than its
non-cleavage based social base. However, the appeal of the first average support. The party responded to this setback by focusPrime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, transcended social groups ing on Muslims along with SCs and STs. It went on to garner
even after the first decade of independence. Therefore, the Con- support among the upper castes too, but failed to achieve that
gress continued to retain the same non-cleavage based charac- same level of support among the OBCsits support among
ter in the 1960s. This was also because the parties opposed to OBCs was 7% less than its average base in the 1971 survey. IronCongress engaged in the exercise of building two mutually ically, while the erosion to its strong base was underway, this
contrasting social coalitionsone comprising the conserva- weakness of the Congressthat it had weak support among
tive and well-to-do elements (Jan Sangh and Swatantra) and the OBCskept company with the party during the 1990s and
the other comprising mostly the lower classes (the socialists greatly contributed to the overall decline of the party.
and the communists). This development helped the Congress
While data on economic class is not easy to reconstruct from
in retaining a non-cleavage based character and attracting all past surveys, if we use education as proxy for class during that
sections (albeit in varying degrees). Heath and Yadav (2010) initial period of 196771, then what do we find? In 1967, among
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the highly educated (with college education), the Congress had

less support. If this indicates the beginning of disenchantment
with the party among the middle classes, the trend becomes
quite pronounced in 1971. As we move from non-educated
respondents to respondents with higher levels of education,
support for the Congress declines. There is therefore room to
argue that in 1971, apart from the clear pattern of communitybased support, the Congress also received more support from the
poor and less from the well-to-do. That is why the 1971 social base
of the Congress can be described as an attempt to build a cleavagebased social coalition (Heath and Yadav 2010: 211-13). The shift
of the OBCs away from the Congress became more pronounced
in 1991. Again, using recall data, Heath and Yadav (p 201) show
that the Congress base among OBCs was decidedly less (a gap of
7 percentage points from its average support) in 1991.
As we move from the period of Congress dominance to
politics during the decline of the Congress (during the 1990s),
the weaknesses of the previous period become more prominent
and the strengths of the earlier period fade away. By the 1970s,
OBCs had already become restless about the Congresss politics
and this was reflected in the results from the north Indian
Hindi-speaking states. The Congress never tried to ameliorate
this situation. The failure of the party to respond satisfactorily
to Mandal mobilisations during the late 1980s further exacerbated its uneasy relationship with the OBC communities, particularly in states where OBCs had begun to acquire political agency
as a social group. But during the 1990s, the party also lost votes
among the upper castes consistently. Finally, the famous social
coalition of 1971 began to crumble when the Congress started
losing votes among the Dalits and Adivasis. As Tables 3 and 4
report, Congresss social base among different community and
class blocs from 1996 to 2014 became progressively faceless;
the party lost votes among not only the Dalits and Adivasis but
also polled relatively less among the Muslimsthough much
higher than its overall vote share.
Searching for a Social Base

Throughout the third life of the Congress, the party kept groping for a social base. Indira Gandhi initiated the strategy of
building a political coalition of upper castes, Dalits, Adivasis
Table 3: Congress Base among Community Groups

1996
1998
1999
2004
2009
2014

(19962014, %)

Upper

OBC

SC

ST

Muslim

Overall Congress
Vote

25
22
21
23
26
13

25
23
24
24
24
15

34
28
30
26
27
19

42
32
46
37
38
28

36
32
40
36
38
38

28.8
25.8
28.3
26.5
28.6
19.3

Source: Data Unit, CSDS.

Table 4: Congress Base among Class Groups

1996
1999
2004
2009
2014

Middle

Lower

Poor

Overall Congress Vote

26
26
26
30
17

28
27
30
29
20

28
30
26
30
19

30
29
26
26
20

28.8
28.3
26.5
28.6
19.3

Source: Data Unit, CSDS.

42

(19962014, %)

Rich

and minoritiesa strategy later identified as coalition of extremes and practised in Madhya Pradesh under Digvijay
Singhs leadership (Jaffrelot 2003: Ch 12). Through the 1990s,
almost everywhere one extreme of that coalitionupper
castesdeserted the party. But the party could also not become a party of the marginalised because on the one hand the
SCs began to vote for various other alternativesmostly statespecific alternativesand as Table 4 shows, in the post-1991
period, the Congress never really drew its strength from the
poor. It clearly lacked any class character at all. The contingency of communal polarisation resulting from the Bharatiya
Janata Partys (BJP) continued emphasis on Hindutva has
meant that the Muslims still choose to vote for Congress in
relatively greater numbers. With Christians and Adivasis also
preferring the Congress a little more than most other social
sections, the party gets the image of a party of minorities. This
feature was much more in prominence in the 2014 elections
(Palshikar 2014: 60). As survey data for the 2014 elections
indicate, the BJP has been successful in attracting Adivasi
votes in large proportions (Palshikar and Suri 2014: 43). More
importantly, the all-India data on Muslim voting is also somewhat misleading in that the Muslims of Assam, Kerala, West
Bengal, Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar are either deeply split or
do not vote for the Congress in large numbers at all (Alam
2009: 94; Sardesai et al 2014: 32-33). These details suggest
that from a catch-all party, the Congress is rapidly moving to
become a catch-none party. The apparent support of the
minorities is only a temporary and weak trend in that journey.
3 Geography of Decimation

For most of its existence, the Congress could claim that it was
the only truly all-India party. When it was the dominant
party, its dominance spanned almost the entire country during the 1960s. Even in the initial period of its decline (during
1989-99), the Congress remained a significant force in many
states. However, this distinctive feature of the Congress comes
under a cloud when we start disaggregating the political
geography of Congresss performance over the years.
First, even in the times of the Congress system, that aggregated picture camouflaged the weak points of the party at the
state level. In South India, Kerala and Tamil Nadu were the
states where the Congress system never really took off. Not
only was the Congress not able to retain power in these two
states, the political competition, too was not shaped by the
Congress. Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and West
Bengal also, the Congress system was very weak or almost
non-existent even during the time of Congress dominance. In
fact, in all these states, the ability of the Congress to win
elections did not produce the Congress system and also did not
result in hegemony of the Congress. We can classify the states
as non-Congress states, states with only an electoral dominance by the Congress and states having a Congress system.
Such a classification yields an interesting result that very few
states indeed were in the third category. The Congress system
did emerge at the all-India level, but not many states witnessed
it even during the 1950s and 1960s.
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Second, among the states that may be included in the category

of Congress system statesRajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and UPwe can make a
further distinction between states with a strong Congress
system and ones with a weak system. Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP
and Bihar would fall in the latter category because there the
Congress easily lost support of key communities and also
failed to restrict the rise of alternative world views that could
form the basis for undermining the Congress system. It is no
wonder, therefore, that following Kerala, the states that
elected non-Congress governments in 1967 were precisely from
this group of weak Congress dominance or a weak Congress
system (Punjab, UP, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu).
Third, the Congress seems to have a limitation in that
when it loses a state, it rarely recovers space there. This has
happened in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and later in UP and
Bihar. Odisha and Gujarat are on the verge of joining this
group of states. In other words, the capacity of the party to
bounce back in democratic competition seems to be very
limited. Only when the adversaries are weak, can the party
retain its dominance, but when confronted by and removed by
strong adversaries, the Congress practically vacates the political
space at the state level. But more than the nature of the
adversaries, this feature has perhaps something to do with the
social base of the Congress.
Congress after 1989

Against this backdrop, how does the Congress of the post-1989

period look like? We can imagine three different groups of
states in the post-1989 period as far as the Congress is concerned. First, there are states where the party retained power
for much of the two-and-half decades since the 1990s. We can
call them Congress states of the post-Congress era (though
of course, of these, the party has finally lost Delhi, Haryana and
Maharashtra by the end of 2014). Then there are states where
the Congress keeps winning power from time to time or is at
Table 5: Classification of States in post-Congress Period
Congress States

Congress-Presence States

Non-Congress States

Delhi*
Haryana*
Maharashtra*
Manipur
Assam
Arunachal Pradesh
Meghalaya
Mizoram

HP
Punjab
Rajasthan
Gujarat
Goa
Karnataka
Kerala
Andhra Pradesh**
Odisha**
MP
Chhattisgarh
Uttarakhand
Tripura
Nagaland
Jammu and Kashmir#

Tamil Nadu
UP
Bihar
Jharkhand
West Bengal
Sikkim

*In these states Congress lost power in 201415 and as such they may have since moved to
the Congress-presence category.
**In these states, the Congress may have slid to a more long-term exile following its very
weak performance in 2014.
# J&K is included in this category since by entering into coalitions, the Congress was in
power at the state level for much of the period under review and even in 2014, though out
of power, retained its base.
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least the major opposition at the state level. These states may be
called Congress-presence states. Finally, there are states where
the Congress has been reduced to being less than significant, a
third or distant player. We call them non-Congress states.
The tables in the Appendix throw more light on the Congresss
decline in contemporary times. While we have identified some
states as Congress states implying that the Congress has been a
dominant force in these states even during the post-1989 period, the performance of the party in its bastions shows a story
of inevitable decline. Of the eight states listed in this category,
the party has already lost power in three by early 2015. In
these three states, Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra, the party
has lost badly and survey data indicate that invariably the
party has lost its base among all social sections.4 Thus, if we
were not taking a long-term view, these states could easily go
into the category of non-Congress states! While the Congress
could retain power in Arunachal, its base there is shaky with a
section of the state party joining the Arunachal Congress and
then coming back to the original party. In Assam, in the 2014
parliamentary election, the party lost its pre-eminence and a
communal polarisation between the BJP and All India United
Democratic Front might further decimate the party in that
state. Thus, this entire category actually becomes quite
emptythere is a possibility that there will be no Congress
states any more in the near future.
The group of non-Congress states includes, besides Tamil
Nadu in the south, states in the north and east. But more than
the geography, what is more crucial is the time factor. In Tamil
Nadu, the Congress lost relevance long back in 1967 and has
never regained any relevance. Thus, by now, for more than
four decades the party has been only a nominal third player
there. Its ability to win seats further declined when the
Moopanar faction formed the Tamil Maanila Congress and later
when political competition in the state became more complex
and coalitional. In UP and Bihar, the problems began at the
same time as in Tamil Nadu, in 1967, but Congress managed to
reemerge in 1971 and again in 1980. Finally, it lost the script in
198990 in these statesso its irrelevance in UP and Bihar
(including Jharkhand) is now 25 years old. In West Bengal,
the Congress lost power in 1977 and has never been in the
reckoning since. In 1982 and 1987, it polled 36% and 42% votes
and similarly, its vote share was robust till the 1996 assembly
election. Once the faction led by Mamata Banerjee left the
party to form the Trinamool Congress, the Congress in West
Bengal became a non-entity.
Two traits emerge from this review of the Congress states
and the non-Congress states. One is that when Congress loses
votes and social bases, it keeps losing consistently. The other is
that these states show that once the Congress is defeated, it
almost never is likely to win the control of government back
from its competitors.
States Critical for the Future

This leaves a large number of states that are going to be critical

for the ability of the Congress to resurface. These are states
from the category where the Congress continues to have a
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SPECIAL ARTICLE

presence and hence the potential to contain its decline. On the

face of it, this is a longlist of states15 states spread across the
country. Within these, there are actually two somewhat distinct groups: one, where the Congress keeps coming back to
power even during the phase of its decline and, two, states
where it has a seemingly strong existence but that has not been
translated into electoral victories for quite some time. Himachal
Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra
Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Nagaland form the first subgroup
and the remaining states belong to the latter subgroup. Given
the overall demoralisation of the party following the 2014 outcome, it would be a moot point if it can win back states like
Punjab, Rajasthan or Andhra Pradesh (and Telangana) in the
next round of elections. But even more complicated is the story
of states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Chhattisgarh
and Odisha where the party has been out of power for more
than a decade and is on the verge of becoming irrelevant. Only
a two-party competition in these states helped the Congress to
remain the main opposition. But as developments in Odisha
show, the moment the third player emerges, the Congress
easily slides into oblivion. In the three BJP-ruled states, the
Congress continues to be the only opposition, with at least
one-third of the vote share but in a bipolar contest, this vote
share is not adequate to win seats.
Given the vagaries of the FPTP system of election and
Congresss limited ability to convert votes into seats, the party
would need to poll around 40% or more votes in bipolar states
and at least 30% in states marked with multiparty competition.
Tables A1, A2 and A3 (pp 45, 46) indicate the problems the
party faces in this respect. In the last five years (201015),
the Congress has polled (a little less or more than) 40% votes
in only eight states. Of these, the two states of Gujarat and
Chhattisgarh are perhaps the most crucial for the party. In
Gujarat, even during the times of Narendra Modi, the party
managed to keep polling 38% to 39% votes consistently and it
is only a step from this for the party to add a few more percentage
points to its vote when it will start winning more seats there.
In Chhattisgarh, its performance even in terms of seats has
been robust and waiting to improve as the incumbency fatigue
sets in. Thus, ironical as it may seem, the revival programme
of the party has to begin from these two core BJP states.
Looking at the category of Congress-presence states poses
us with a dilemma: is the Congress likely to move on the lines
of its trajectory in the non-Congress states, or is there ground
for its survival? Since its defeat in 2014 parliamentary elections, the Congress has not shown any signs of recovery. The
experience of Andhra, Telangana and Odisha suggests that entry of new players displaces the Congress rather easily. This is
also what has happened in UP and Bihar around the late 1980s
and in Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal in the late
1990s. This is not just about the arithmetic of elections and
coalitions; it is about social bases. As we saw in the previous
section, the Congress nationally lacks the strong loyalty of almost any social section and this more or less applies at the
state level too. Therefore, when a new party attracts various
social sections, the Congress is helpless in winning back those
44

sections again. State after state is witness to this fundamental

sign of decline.
4 Limitations

It is clear from the foregoing that rejuvenation of the Congress

is going to be an uphill task. Following 2014, survival itself is
at stake. As we saw in the previous section, the party continues
to have a geographic space available to it even today. However,
the sociopolitical space is lacking. There are states where the
Congress still has a sizeable presence in terms of vote share
and a political position of being the only opposition force; but
the party does not have a sharp social profile even in those
states. Both nationally and at the state level, the votes of the
Congress come mainly in a residual manner; that is, some of
the traditional Congress voters still continue to vote for the
party; the less educated and voters with less media exposure still
vote for the Congress in relatively large numbers; in bipolar
contests the party wins votes from a cross section just because
voters would not want to vote for the incumbent (party or candidate); and yet it would be difficult to say that any social section
is particularly close to Congress. The Adivasi vote is getting
divided between the Congress and BJP in the crucial states of
MP and Chhattisgarh. The Dalit vote has already deserted the
party in UP and Bihar; besides, Dalits of Gujarat too do not
vote for the Congress any more. While the Congress did fare
much better than its average as far as the Muslim voters are
concerned, in UP, Bihar and West Bengal the Muslims are increasingly moving away from the Congress. Thus, in the group
of Congress-presence states, the party does not come out with
any social character or identity. This is equally true of economic class. The Congress today is neither a party of the poor
and lower class nor is it a party of the middle classes.
These limitations of the absence of social space for the party
are both cause and effect of the absence of political space. In
competitive politics, parties occasionally lose support from their
core constituency. In such situations, they either win back those
constituencies or win over newer constituencies and retain
their salience in competitive politics. In the case of the Congress,
because the Congresss original broad social constituency was
derivative (originating in the pre-independence mobilisations),
rather than carved through post-independence political
activity, the party has not been able to win back those
sections that cut loose from the party. It could almost be said
that the broad social constituency of the Congress during the
Nehru years was more by defaultbecause there were very
few claimants to those social constituencies and the moment
the adversarial claims began to be extended, the Congress
went on losing those sections one by one and state by state. As
for winning over new social bases, this has been the most
glaring failure of the party in reshaping and renewing itself
on a regular basis.
Critical Weakness

This limitation was accompanied by the shift in the partys and

its governments economic and social policies. Zoya Hasan
(2012) discusses the dilemmas arising out of that shift. As she
may 9, 2015

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Economic & Political Weekly

SPECIAL ARTICLE

points out, during the post-Indira years, the Congress kept

moving away from ideological frameworks (Hasan 2012:
226) and she locates this in the global tendency among
political parties in the era of globalisation. Bijukumar also
chronicles the shifts in economic policy of the Congress and
concludes that rejuvenation of the party is possible only
within the context of a policy of distributive justice (Bijukumar
2006: 26063).
For a party that was for long ideologically propped up on
Nehrus socialism and Indira Gandhis rhetoric of populism,
the shift of the 1980s and 1990s was going to be a tough transformation. But it is not the economic shift that really constitutes
the critical challenge for the party. The near-total absence of
organisation and the leadership crisis that emerged in the
aftermath of Indira Gandhis assassination were more critical
to the problems faced by the Congress. Ever since the party
entered its third lifeduring Rajiv Gandhis time itselfit has
been lacking in any political programme that would attract
particular social sections.
Rajiv Gandhi and later Narasimha Rao steered the government towards a different policy of economic development.
Both of them failed to adapt the partys politics to this new
turn. In the case of Rajiv Gandhi political ignorance and in the
case of Rao political inability led to this predicament. But the
net result in both cases was the samea near total abdication
Notes
1

The term multiplier, for comprehending the

discrepancy between vote share and seat
share, is attributed to Eric P W de Costa. See
Rudolph and Rudolph (2008: 29).
They use a recall question from the 1967 survey,
that is, a question about who the respondent
voted in previous election, in order to estimate
the support for parties among different social
sections.
Source: CSDS Data Unit. CSDS has been conducting National Election Studies since 1967
and is the most reliable and largest data unit
on Indias elections. For details, see, Lokniti
Team; 2004. Also see www.lokniti.org. The
1967 survey, however, was limited in that it
did not have women respondents. Weighted
data sets.
For details of survey data for these elections,
see, respectively, reports in Indian Express, 12
February 2015 (How Delhi Voted), 21 October
2014 (How Haryana Voted and How
Maharashtra Voted).

Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003): Indias Silent Revolution, New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Kothari, Rajni (1964): The Congress System in India,
Asian Survey, 4 (12), December, pp 116173.
Palshikar, Suhas (2014): The Defeat of the
Congress, Economic & Political Weekly, 49
(39), 27 September, pp 57-63.
Palshikar, Suhas and K C Suri (2014): Indias 2014
Lok Sabha Elections: Critical Shifts in the Long
Term, Caution in the Short Term, Economic &
Political Weekly, 49 (39), 27 September, pp 3949.
Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber and Lloyd I Rudolph
(2008): Congress Learns to Lose: From
One-Party Dominant to a Multi-party System
in India, Friedman and Wong (eds), 1541.

Alam, Mohd Sanjeer (2009): Whither Muslim

Politics?, Economic & Political Weekly, 44 (39),
26 September; 9295.
Bijukumar, V (2006): Reinventing the Congress,
Jaipur: Rawat.
Friedman, Edward and Joseph Wong (eds) (2008):
Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems:
Learning to Lose, NY: Routledge.
Hasan, Zoya (2012): Congress after Indira, New
Delhi: OUP.
Heath, Oliver and Yogendra Yadav (2010): The
Rise of Caste Politics: Party system Change and
Voter Realignment, 19622004, Diversity and
Change in Modern India, in Anthony F Heath
and Roger Jeffery (eds), Oxford: British Academy
and OUP; 189218.
EPW

may 9, 2015

Sardesai, Shreyas, Pranav Gupta and Reetika Syal

(2014): The Religious Fault Line in the 2014
Elections, Panjab University Research JournalSocial Sciences, 22 (2): 2844.
Taagepera, R and M S Shugart (1989): Seats and
Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral
Systems, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Yadav, Yogendra (2004): The Elusive Mandate of
2004, Economic & Political Weekly, 39 (51), 18
December, 538398.
Yadav, Yogendra and Suhas Palshikar (2009):
Between Fortuna and Virtu: Explaining
the Congress Ambiguous Victory in 2009,
Economic & Political Weekly, 44 (39), 26 September, 3346.

REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

November 29, 2014
Rethinking Governance of Public Toilets:
Lessons for Swacch Bharat from Hyderabad

References

Economic & Political Weekly

of politics in the deeper sense. Rajiv Gandhi could not engage

in politics because he was clueless and Rao could not because
he was constrained by his limitations, not being the leader of
the party and also not having mass appeal.
Circumstances brought the Congress back to power in
2004it is not at all that the party earned that victory; victory
was thrust on the party (see Yadav (2004) and Yadav and
Palshikar (2009) for analyses suggesting how circumstantial
factors rather than any design and initiative brought the
Congress back to power). For the Congress, it is convenient to
say that Sonia brought it back to power. The fact is that Sonia
Gandhis rise to leadership of the party had only a very peripheral effect and that too on the factions within the party, not on
the electorate (Yadav 2004, p 5396 and Note 12). So, the real
decline of the party is not the dwindling numbersnumbers
only tell the story more starklythe real decline of the Congress
is in its failure to engage in politics and thereby ceding the
sociopolitical space in the first place.
For a party to survive for a quarter of a century without
doing politics is somewhat extraordinary and the Congress has
got away so far without doing politics. Now that it is in the
wilderness, it would have a limited choiceeither re-engage
with politics or witness a slow demise. If the latter happens, it
would be not because of lack of opportunities but because of
unwillingness to do politics.

Indivar Jonnalagadda, Sandeep Tanniru

Mapping the Coastal Commons

Fisherfolk and the Politics of Coastal Urbanisation in Chennai
Analysing Urban Growth Boundary Effects on the City of Bengaluru
Delusory Transformations:
Transportation Projects under JNNURM in Dehradun
Selective Inclusions and Exclusions:
Land-Use Planning and Development in Ratnagiri

vol l no 19

Mukul Kumar, K Saravanan,

Nityanand Jayaraman
Madalasa Venkataraman
Gaurav Mittal
Ratoola Kundu, Geetanjoy Sahu

For copies write to:

Circulation Manager,
Economic and Political Weekly,
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in

45

SPECIAL ARTICLE
Appendix
Table A1: Congress Performance in Congress States19892015
Seats

Seats

198993
Votes (%)

199499
Votes (%)

Seats

200004
Seats

Votes (%)

Seats

200509
Votes (%)

Delhi 2013/15

70

14

34.5

52

47.8

47

48.1

43

40.1

Haryana 2005/09

90

51

33.7

20.8

21

31.2

288

141

38.2

18.8

26

33.7

31.0
27.2
28.7

69*

60

80
75*
22

67
40
82*

126
60

66
37

29.2
44.3

24
23
16

34.6
34.9
33.1

30.1
50.5
51.9
35.0
29.8

26.3
26.2
39.8
44.4

60
40

61
43
53
25
6

23
20
71
34
22
12

30.0
30.1

Maharashtra 1995/99
Manipur 2000/02
Assam
Arunachal Pradesh 1995/99
Meghalaya
Mizoram 1989/93

201015
Seats
Votes (%)

42.5
35.1
21.0

8
0
15

24.6
9.7
20.6

42*

18.0

30

34.3

42

42.4

53
42

31.1
50.4

78
42

39.4
49.5

25
32

32.9
38.9

29
34

34.8
44.6

* In 1999, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was formed and it won 58 seats and polled 22.6% votes; in 2004: 71 and 18.8%; in 2009: 62 and 16.4% and in 2014 : 41 seats and 17.2% votes.

Table A2: Congress Performance in Congress-Presence States19892015

Seats

HP 1990/93

198993
Votes (%)

Punjab
Rajasthan 1990/93

117
199

Gujarat 1995/98

182

9
52
87
5
76
33

Goa 1999/2002

40

20

40.5

Karnataka 1994/99

224

178

43.8

Kerala
AP 1994/99

140
294

55
181

32.1
47.1

Odisha 2005/09

147

10

29.8

320/230

56
174

10
36
35

33.4
40.7

32.8
51.5
46.0

MP 1990/93

68

Seats

Chhattisgarh
Uttarakhand
Tripura
Nagaland 1989/93

90
70
60
60

Jammu and Kashmir (from 1996)

87

36.5
48.8
43.8
33.6
38.3
30.7

199499
Seats

Votes (%)

Seats

31

43.5

43

14
153

26.6
45.0

45
53
18
21
34
132
37
26
91
80

32.9
34.9
37.5
38.6
27.0
40.8
30.4
33.9
40.6
39.1

172

200004
Votes (%)

200509

201015
Seats
Votes (%)

Seats

Votes (%)

41.0

41

43.8

36

42.8

62
56

35.8
35.7

44
96

40.9
36.8

46
21

40.1
33.1

51

39.3

59

38.0

61

38.9

17

35.6

16

32.3

30.8

65

35.3

80

34.8

122

36.6

62
185

31.4
38.6

24
156

24.1
36.6

38
21

26.4
11.7

26

33.8

25.7

38

31.6

34.8
29.1
32.4

16

40.6

38
27
71

58

36.4

13
53

34.0
50.7

37
36
13
21

36.7
26.9
32.8
35.9

38
21
10
23

38.6
29.6
36.4
36.3

39
32
10
8

40.3
33.8
36.5
24.9

20.0

20

24.2

17

17.7

12

18.0

Votes (%)

Seats

0*

5.6

7*

Table A3: Congress Performance in Non-Congress States19892015

TN 1989/1991
UP 1989/91/93

Bihar 2005
February and October
Jharkhand 2005/09
West Bengal**
Sikkim 1994/99

198993
Votes (%)

199499

Seats

Seats

234

26
60
94
46
28
71

19.8
15.2
27.9
17.3
15.1
24.8

33

8.4

29

43
0

35.1
18.1

425/ 403
since
2000
324/
243
81
294
32

Seats

200004
Votes (%)

200509

201015
Seats
Votes (%)

Seats

Votes (%)

2.5

34

8.4

9.3

25

9.0

22

8.6

28

11.6

16.3

23

11.1

8.4

10.5

82
2
0

39.5
15.0
3.7

26
1

8.0
26.1

5.0
6.1
12.1
16.2
14.7
27.6

10
9
9
14
21
0

42
0

9.1
1.4

*In 1996 Tamil Maanil Congress was the breakaway party that won 39 seats and polled 9.3% votes; in 2001 it won 23 seats and polled 6.% votes;
**In West Bengal, Trinamool Congress was the breakaway party since the 2001 election. In 2001 it won 60 seats and polled 30.7% votes; in 2006 30 seats and 26.6% votes and in 2011 184
seats and 38.3% votes.
Source for Tables A1, A2 and A3: http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/ElectionStatistics.aspx; accessed 7 April 2015. For results of J&K assembly election in 2014, Data Unit, CSDS.

46

may 9, 2015

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