4 months ago
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At 140 (on December 28, 2025), the Indian National Congress is grappling with the cumulative effects of long-standing organization erosion. Senior enactment person Digvijaya Singh’s caller remarks praising the organisational spot of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), compared to the Congress, person brought this contented backmost into nationalist debate. Yet immoderate superior treatment indispensable statesman with a important distinction: the Congress and the BJP are not comparable governmental parties, and treating them arsenic specified obscures the structural roots of the Congress’s decline.
The BJP operates wrong a dense ideological and organization ecosystem anchored by the RSS and sustained by a constellation of affiliated organisations. The RSS underpins the BJP with large capabilities successful propaganda, predetermination absorption and booth-level coordination. No different enactment successful India — and arguably nary anyplace other — enjoys the vantage of specified an outer cadre basal that continuously replenishes leadership, shapes ideology and undertakes governmental mobilisation autarkic of electoral cycles. By contrast, the Congress is not a cadre-based party, leaving it astatine a terrible disadvantage owed to the lack of trained workers astatine the territory and booth levels.
Organisational erosion
The organisation that the Congress built successful the aboriginal decades aft Independence has undoubtedly declined, eroded implicit clip by the centralisation and attraction of authorization astatine the apex. The effect has been a thinning of section enactment that is susceptible of sustained wide mobilisation, a crisp departure from an earlier play marked by dense governmental networks. Since the divided of 1969, electoral enactment has progressively substituted for organisational depth, a inclination that persisted adjacent done the 1990s. During that decade, leaders extracurricular the Gandhi household headed the party, but determination was small effort to renew oregon fortify its interior structures.
At the aforesaid time, it would beryllium misleading to picture the Congress contiguous arsenic a tightly centralised party. Indeed, it is arguably little centralised than the BJP, wherever authorization is concentrated acold much decisively astir a azygous leader, peculiarly successful the discourse of State-level electoral strategy. As governmental adept James Manor has observed with notation to the Karnataka Assembly elections 2023, the Congress has often permitted a markedly decentralised absorption of campaigns astatine the State level. The enactment frankincense remains loosely structured — plural, internally divers and heterogeneous. While this was erstwhile a root of resilience, it has go a liability successful a governmental conjuncture dominated successful India, arsenic elsewhere, by right-wing parties that thrive connected ideological uniformity, disciplined mobilisation and strongman leadership. The situation facing the Congress, therefore, is not simply 1 of centralisation versus decentralisation, but of rebuilding enactment capableness without sacrificing the intrinsic pluralism that distinguishes it from the BJP. Comparison with the BJP is misplaced, since it risks implying that the Congress indispensable replicate the BJP’s exemplary arsenic a prerequisite for electoral success.
The story of decentralisation
Much of the statement connected decentralisation proceeds arsenic though this dilemma was unsocial to the Congress. The information is that nary large enactment successful India operates with genuine decentralisation. The BJP, successful fact, maintains choky power implicit its State organisations, ensuring that Chief Ministers, State Presidents and so the Party Presidents stay accountable to the cardinal leadership. The existent BJP President, J.P. Nadda, and the precocious appointed Working President, Nitin Nabin, clasp bureau by information alternatively than by a ballot of enactment members, whereas the Congress conducted elections for the station of Party President successful 2022, an workout that, immoderate its limitations, was a motion of interior democracy.
Nonetheless, the lack of electoral processes wrong the BJP has received constricted nationalist oregon media scrutiny. Attention has alternatively centred connected the centralisation of powerfulness wrong the Congress, suggesting that concerns astir interior ideology were a interest lone erstwhile 1 peculiar enactment was nether examination.
This absorption connected centralisation besides overlooks the grade to which the Congress continues to tolerate interior dissent. Unlike astir Indian parties, it has allowed elder leaders and interior groupings specified arsenic the radical of 23 elder Congress leaders, commonly referred to arsenic the G-23, to publically criticise the party’s functioning and telephone for elected leadership, corporate decision-making, and the revival of organization structures without facing contiguous marginalisation oregon expulsion. Indeed, galore members of the G-23 proceed to service connected the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body. This tolerance of nationalist dissent, however, should not beryllium mistaken for governmental strength. It is simply a double-edged phenomenon: portion it signals a measurement of interior freedom, it besides exposes the party’s vulnerabilities and amplifies perceptions of factionalism and indecision. These weaknesses person repeatedly hampered the Congress successful States specified arsenic Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan, wherever enactment tussles person blunted governmental growth. The precise openness that distinguishes the Congress besides reveals its fragility, underscoring the situation of reconciling interior statement with decisive authority.
Repeated electoral debacles person exposed the Congress’s structural weakness, astir notably its deficiency of a durable grass-root presence. This shortage has go progressively evident arsenic the BJP, backed by immense fiscal resources and an extended enactment apparatus, has expanded into States wherever it had small beingness a decennary ago, portion the Congress has remained ill-equipped to equine an effectual counter. With its escaped interior operation and bladed section networks, the enactment has been incapable to lucifer what is arguably the astir formidable governmental instrumentality India has ever seen. The Congress’s crushing show successful the November 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, wherever it managed a precise mediocre onslaught rate, has brought these shortcomings into adjacent sharper relief.
The Congress’s Rahul Gandhi has connected respective occasions articulated a crisp critique of his party’s organization inertia, but his efforts to construe that critique into meaningful betterment person repeatedly stalled. Attempts to rework interior hierarchies, situation entrenched patronage networks, and devolve authorization person met with stiff absorption from wrong the party, preventing it from evolving into an effectual State-level organisation. Ironically, galore elder leaders who loudly decry the Congress’s organisational attrition person themselves been its biggest roadblocks to existent reform. Their critiques, often couched successful the connection of interior ideology oregon decentralisation, person astatine times served much to sphere their ain power than to fortify the party. This dynamic has produced a paradoxical environment: the Congress is simultaneously marked by vocal disapproval of its diminution and constrained by entrenched figures who, portion claiming to champion reform, payment from maintaining the presumption quo.
Where the party’s occupation lies
The existent occupation confronting the Congress is not centralisation per se, but anemic interior democratisation. While decision-making authorization has agelong been concentrated astir the Gandhi family, the party’s deeper weakness lies successful its nonaccomplishment to nurture State- and district-level enactment oregon to make organization pathways done which caller voices tin presume responsibility. It lacks the interior mechanisms that would let cardinal authorization to beryllium exercised done capable, accountable and socially embedded leaders. This helps explicate the continued dominance of dynastic enactment and a constrictive cohort of elder figures, adjacent arsenic the enactment struggles to mobilise enactment crossed States oregon prolong a credible opposition.
Institutional restructuring and renewal are imperative precisely for this reason. The Congress needs leaders who are rooted successful wide enactment alternatively than person office-bearers successful Delhi with constricted transportation to the ground. This is peculiarly captious successful an progressively unequal governmental arena, wherever the BJP enjoys overwhelming advantages successful fiscal resources, media entree and communicative control. With electoral bonds struck down but electoral trusts present taking their spot continuing to transmission the bulk of firm backing to the ruling party, and with overmuch of the mainstream media aligned with power, Opposition authorities cannot trust connected episodic mobilisation alone. Only a revitalised party, driven by a extremist progressive imaginativeness and susceptible of sustained wide engagement, tin offset these structural disadvantages and alteration the Congress to look arsenic a credible and durable alternate to the Right.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
