Cong must change its approach to stay relevant: Ramesh
The Congress is facing an “existential crisis”, senior party leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday said and pitched for “a collective effort” to “overcome” the challenges it faced from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah.
“Yes, the Congress is facing a very serious crisis,” Ramesh said. He said the Congress had faced “electoral crisis” from 1996 to 2004 when it was out of power. The party had also faced “electoral crisis” in 1977 when it lost the elections held soon after the emergency.
“But today, I would say that the Congress is facing an existential crisis. It is not an electoral crisis. The party is in deep crisis,” he said, when asked whether the threat of “poaching” of MLAs posed by the BJP in Gujarat had forced the party to transport its MLAs to Karnataka to ensure party leader Ahmed Patel’s victory in the Rajya Sabha polls.
He, however, justified the Gujarat Congress’s decision to send 44 of its MLAs to a resort in Karnataka to fend off the alleged “poaching” attempts by BJP, saying the saffron party had also “transported” MLAs in the past.
He said it was wrong for the Congress to think that anti-incumbency will work automatically against the Modi-led government in the states being ruled by the BJP.
“We have to understand we are up against Modi, Shah. And they think differently, they act differently, and if we are not flexible in our approach, we will become irrelevant,” he said.
He said the Congress must also recognise that India has changed. “Old slogans don’t work, old formulas don’t work, old mantras don’t work. India has changed, the Congress party has to change,” he said.