Part of doing well is setting low expectations. By that measure, and that measure only, can India’s grand old party consider itself even somewhat successful. Opinion polls and analysts were not expecting the Congress to pass even the double-digit mark in terms of seats in the 87-member Jammu and Kashmir assembly, where the party had been in power along with the National Conference for the last five years.
With that handicap in mind, the Congress’ actual result, 12 seats, seems like quite the feat. But it masks a precipitous decline in the fortunes of a party that has ruled over much of the country for most of its independent history. To put the 12 seats in perspective, the Congress saw a near 7% drop in its vote share in J&K while in Jharkhand, five years after it managed to grab 21.4% of all votes, this time it managed a paltry 10.5% with a haul of just six seats.
That caps a terrible 2014 for the party. Its president Sonia Gandhi’s health problems persist, heir apparent Rahul Gandhi has failed to impress from any angle and it was thoroughly routed in the general elections in May. Since then the party has been unable to regroup much, simply tagging along with a partially successful anti-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance in the Bihar bypolls and gaining somewhat from a fractured four-way battle in Maharashtra.
Pushed to the periphery
There is, however, little indication that the party has understood any of the reasons that its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls was so comprehensive or that it has figured any sort of approach to the national discourse beyond simply being opposed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
There’s even the danger, in a sense, of the Congress being pushed to the periphery. The BJP now rules a vast swathe of the Indian heartland from Gujarat to Jharkhand, with alliance partners taking the lead in Punjab and Telangana. The Congress, meanwhile, might still have nine states in its kitty, but five of those are in the Northeast and its leads in the hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh are tenuous at best.
The maps below give you an idea of how much the electoral landscape has changed in the last two years, at the state assembly level (with the caveat that things aren't final in Jammu and Kashmir yet).
And if you think that India’s first past the post system might be hiding subtler shifts, a quick look at the vote shares is also telling. The Congress has, across the board, given up leads that it once held. In the general polls and every state election since then, it has ceded a massive amount of space to the BJP.
Ceding space
A 26% lead over the BJP in Haryana in the 2009 state assembly polls, for example, this year turned into a vote share that was 12.6% behind the saffron party. Similarly, in Jharkhand, where only 2% points once separate the parties, the gap is now a whopping 20%.
If there is to be optimism for the next year, where should it come from? Not Delhi, where the Aam Aadmi Party has taken the entire opposition space and not in Parliament, where it seems parties like the Trinamool Congress are having more of an effect at stymieing the BJP’s agenda. Only Bihar, where the Congress, playing third-fiddle to the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, might offer some hope, and even that is no sure thing.
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With that handicap in mind, the Congress’ actual result, 12 seats, seems like quite the feat. But it masks a precipitous decline in the fortunes of a party that has ruled over much of the country for most of its independent history. To put the 12 seats in perspective, the Congress saw a near 7% drop in its vote share in J&K while in Jharkhand, five years after it managed to grab 21.4% of all votes, this time it managed a paltry 10.5% with a haul of just six seats.
That caps a terrible 2014 for the party. Its president Sonia Gandhi’s health problems persist, heir apparent Rahul Gandhi has failed to impress from any angle and it was thoroughly routed in the general elections in May. Since then the party has been unable to regroup much, simply tagging along with a partially successful anti-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance in the Bihar bypolls and gaining somewhat from a fractured four-way battle in Maharashtra.
Pushed to the periphery
There is, however, little indication that the party has understood any of the reasons that its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls was so comprehensive or that it has figured any sort of approach to the national discourse beyond simply being opposed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
There’s even the danger, in a sense, of the Congress being pushed to the periphery. The BJP now rules a vast swathe of the Indian heartland from Gujarat to Jharkhand, with alliance partners taking the lead in Punjab and Telangana. The Congress, meanwhile, might still have nine states in its kitty, but five of those are in the Northeast and its leads in the hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh are tenuous at best.
The maps below give you an idea of how much the electoral landscape has changed in the last two years, at the state assembly level (with the caveat that things aren't final in Jammu and Kashmir yet).
And if you think that India’s first past the post system might be hiding subtler shifts, a quick look at the vote shares is also telling. The Congress has, across the board, given up leads that it once held. In the general polls and every state election since then, it has ceded a massive amount of space to the BJP.
Ceding space
A 26% lead over the BJP in Haryana in the 2009 state assembly polls, for example, this year turned into a vote share that was 12.6% behind the saffron party. Similarly, in Jharkhand, where only 2% points once separate the parties, the gap is now a whopping 20%.
If there is to be optimism for the next year, where should it come from? Not Delhi, where the Aam Aadmi Party has taken the entire opposition space and not in Parliament, where it seems parties like the Trinamool Congress are having more of an effect at stymieing the BJP’s agenda. Only Bihar, where the Congress, playing third-fiddle to the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, might offer some hope, and even that is no sure thing.
