After several defeats, Cong eyes a revamp at the grassroots level

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was spearheading the party's Lok Sabha campaign last summer, when a strategist advised him not to make the demand for a caste census his core agenda.

- Saubhadra Chatterji

NEW DELHI: Gandhi dismissed the idea and continued to pitch for one, calling it an X-ray that would reveal the malaise of Indian society.

Gandhi's intransigence translated into a major political victory for his party when the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs decided, on April 30, "to include caste enumeration in the upcoming census". That same evening, he claimed credit for the move, called it the "first step" and "a new paradigm of development" but demanded the Centre remove the 50% cap on caste-based reservation, and use Article 15(5) of the Constitution to implement quotas in private educational institutions.

It was a rare win for a party that had an otherwise forgettable year, frittering away the opportunity inherent in the results of the Lok Sabha election, and managing to lose, from a seemingly invincible position, polls in Haryana and Maharashtra.