RAHUL'S REIGN OF RELENTLESS DEFEATS

IT began not with a whisper, but with a political detonation across the Gangetic plains. Last week, Bihar, always a keen weathervane for shifting political winds, delivered a verdict so mortifying for the Congress that even its most seasoned apologists struggled to dress it up. Contesting 61 seats, the party staggered out with a miserable six. It wasn't a defeat-it was a spectacle of collapse. And at its centre, as always, stood Rahul Gandhi, the prudish prince of a shrinking empire, presiding over the most dramatic political implosion in the history of a once-dominant national party.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

For nearly two decades, Rahul has been more apparition than architect in national politics. Occasionally, he appears with rhetorical flurries and theatrical social media declarations, only to recede just as quickly to a contemplative distance. This oscillation between activism and withdrawal has defined his political journey as a leader-in-themaking. But what it has done to the Congress is far more consequential. It has led to a collapse of its mass appeal, and a spiralling defeat cycle from which it has shown no capacity to escape.

The record is brutal. Rahul joined politics in 2004. But he started influencing the decision-making system from 2009. Since then, according to published data, the Congress has lost 71 of the 83 assembly elections held in the country. That is not a slump. It is institutional liquidation. In parliamentary politics, the story is no less catastrophic. In 2014, the Congress was reduced to 44 Lok Sabha seats, a historic low that shocked even its detractors. A decade later, the party clawed its way to 99 seats. The collapse of its state power tells an even more haunting story. In 2014, the Congress governed 11 states; today, it controls only three-Karnataka, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh, a tiny archipelago of influence in a vast political ocean dominated by the BJP and regional forces. A national party that once dreamed in maps has been reduced to hoping in fragments.