Troubles have grown for India’s grand old party
Congress has many lessons to learn before the next general elections in 2024
WHAT COULD be worse in politics than for a governing party to lose four-fifths of its seats in a single election? Try spending years clawing your way back to relevance, only to see your rival do even better in the next poll. And what could be worse than that? Ask India’s Congress party. Pummelled by the upstart Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, and trounced again in a marathon general election that wrapped up on May 23rd, the grand old party that dominated Indian politics for a generation after the country gained independence in 1947 is now in even deeper trouble than it was five years ago.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “In need of a hand”
From the June 1st 2019 edition
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