Congress Has To Revisit Its Strategy To Make A Serious Play For 2019

Get federal. The Congress has to revisit its strategy vis-a-vis potential allies if it wants to make a serious play for 2019.

- Pragya Singh

The promised second coming did not materialise in the end. Yes, the flock did not really desert Siddaramaiah, the man from the shepherding Kuruba caste who learnt his alphabet by writing on sand. Seven lakh more Kannadigas voted for the Congress than for the BJP—though the vote’s distribution means that the party’s socialist icon has to bow out from the stage. Yet, the hung verdict in Karnataka contains lessons for the Congress as it attempts to write a fresh script in the sand, going into 2019.

It will especially try to evolve a new strategy in states with a strong regional party. The humbling tally of 78 out of 224 seats, well short of the midway mark, holds up an unmissable counterfactual poser to the Congress: what if they had a prepoll tie-up with the JD(S)? The results thus revive the idea of a federal front. Should the Congress abandon the idea of fronting one, ceding space to an anti-BJP phalanx? Should it be in competition with other potential coalition leaders? Or does it, paradoxically, bolster the idea of regional parties looking for synergy with the Congress? As everyone confronts these questions, the verdict has also left the regional parties delighted because now the Congress has to go into coalition-making without being able to dictate terms: its old hubris.