Stung by exits, what the Congress must do

Another day, another exit from the Congress. Former Union law minister Ashwani Kumar severed his 46-year-long association with the party on Tuesday, blaming its leadership for losing touch with ground realities and not being able to read the national mood. He is the second high-profile resignation from the Congress in the ongoing election cycle, with former junior home minister RPN Singh joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last month, and the latest in a steady stream of attrition of leaders from the Grand Old Party.

Leaders leaving political parties, especially ones that are not in power and doing poorly in elections, is a common feature of Indian politics. This may be fuelled by ambitions for oneself or one’s family, bitter personal equations with other politicians, inability to maintain influence and patronage networks when out of power. It is also true that the exit of Mr Kumar, who was never a mass leader, may have only a limited impact on the ongoing elections.

But it’s still bad news for the Congress. Image matters in politics and the party is unable to shake off the image of an outfit that is lurching from crisis to crisis under a leadership that is unwilling to intervene until the last moment. The Congress is locked in a fierce battle to retain one of the few states it rules on its own, a state it was expected to win comfortably even a year ago, and any negative coverage can only hurt its campaign, already riven by dissension. It will also add to the clamour for reforms from the so-called G23, and further erode its standing as a national alternative to the BJP. Introspection is an often abused word in Indian politics and has come to signify little, but the Congress must engage in just that.