CONG'S PROSPECTS IN 2024: BETWEEN SLIM AND NONE

Barely a week after the five state elections in Telangana, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the Congress party is older but not wiser.

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In Telangana, the party won handsomely and Revanth Reddy was sworn in memanant as CM. But Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh have gone the BJP way. Add UP to the cart, and it is clear that mainland Hindi-speaking India believes in the Hindu triumvirate: Ram, Hanuman and Narendra Modi.

This is not just a question of the North - South divide, though it is generally accepted as the most fashionable explanation that the liberals have adopted only because it is reassuring to their vanity. The reassurance that the South is more sophisticated and secular than the North and so opted for the Congress or the CPM, or the DMK.

Generally speaking, the liberals are double-dopamine seekers, suffering from chronic victimhood and vengeance-seeking.

Branding South India as superior puts paid to their emotional needs: I told you so. But it does not explain the Congress party's exploded political strategy.

It is precisely this secular and liberal superciliousness that is repeatedly misleading the Congress-skippered opposition to live in a self-perpetuating bubble. Not only are they talking to themselves and getting excited at the mutual applause, but they are growing increasingly blind to the reality.

And the reality is that you cannot run a campaign identifying Gautam Adani as the single ill-crony capitalism-plaguing India. It demoralises the business community.

That getting rid of Adani will solve the severest economic problems and that Adani in many ways is Modi by other means. It is like political extremists believing in individual extermination as a solution.