CONGRESS NEEDS SONIA, NOT RAHUL ALONE

IT'S an exception beyond explanation. Congress, the grand old party of Indian politics, gets more publicity in defeat than in victory. Last week, when it lost Haryana, which was billed by pendulum pollsters as a winner for them, knee-jerk pundits and media masala manufacturers trotted their tired trope of a Congress struggling for survival—to explain that a rise in vote share means nothing.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

Embarrassed exit poll pundits and their insufferable interpreters, who had predicted a landslide win for the Congress, couldn't digest the indignity of the collapse of the hoary hype of asinine algorithms. As usual, it was the local leadership—not the national netas— who were painted as the villain of the flop show. Rahul Gandhi, the party's pugnacious commander-in-chief, was mocked with jeers and jalebis.

The usual excuses such as factional fights, wrong candidate selection, erratic voting machines, absence of a collective leadership and caste polarisation were offered as explanations why an assured victory became a humiliating loss for the third consecutive term in the state.

A section of the party blamed former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda for why a bird in hand became a turkey shoot. Others accused former Union minister Shelja Kumari and company for causing a fifth-column calamity. It was more of Congress vs Congress than Congress vs BJP. It was a free-for-all among the local caste and community chieftains. The Gandhi-helmed central leadership didn't put its foot down to lasso them together. The party lost over a dozen seats because of its inability to rein in revengeful renegades.

However, decoding the ignominious electoral loss isn't rocket science. Haryana was lost because the Gandhis utterly failed to contain authority-avaricious rebels. Rahul played postcard politics: everyone posing a pretty picture with him on the dais, but no photo-op of collective bonhomie sans the big enchilada. Priyanka Gandhi, an important general secretary, was conspicuous by minimal presence during the entire campaign.