B I Saini 
One cannot look at the Sun with bare eyes to find out how it looks. Similarly, sometimes, the reality or the truth is so stark that one cannot realize it with normal responses.The Congress is in a similar situation. Otherwise, it would not have taken the party, which has ruled India for more than 50 years, to find out why it was reduced to just 44 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.It was obvious that something must have happened in the preceding five years of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance, UPA, rule that reduced it to this sorry state of affairs.
The argument that the opposing forces created a perception of massive corruption during the rule of the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi led UPA rule cannot be the whole truth. It is only part of the explanation, and a small one. The issue of corruption was no doubt played up after the start of the India against Corruption, IAC, movement led by Anna Hazare. There is also no doubt that the projection of presumptive losses running into lakhs of crores by CAG and other functionaries played a major role in building up the UPA’s image as the most corrupt ruling elite the country had seen till then. It is also true that some of these functionaries were rewarded with plum positions under the succeeding Narendra Modi government. But one cannot ignore the truth that the Mamohan Singh- Sonia Gandhi led UPA dispensation did plenty of things which laid it open to frontal attacks from the forces ostensibly trying to stop corruption. One major feature of this was that the UPA dispensation appeared to be reluctant to fight corruption. It did not matter to the general public whether the corruption was done by Congress functionaries or by leaders of allied parties in the UPA government.
But the truth has a way of coming out in the long run, howsoever one tries to suppress it. What happened at Interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s online interaction with party Rajya Sabha members has to be seen in this light. One of the younger MPs pointed out that the Congress decline has to be seen in the light of what happened during the UPA- II rule from 2009 to 2014. And he is completely right.
The Congress cannot overcome the problems facing the party unless there is honest introspection of what went wrong in the years leading upto the 2014 general elections. It is no use denying that something went wrong during those years. Otherwise, the party would not have plummeted to its lowest ever tally in the 2014 elections.
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(Political Analyst)
