Indian National Congress’s Hits and Misses in General Elections 2024

The General Elections 2024 miraculously halted the declining political graph of the Indian National Congress and doubled its presence (seats won) in the lower house of parliament since the national hustings in 2019. The strategies implemented for reviving the party, like ‘Bharat Jodo Yatras’ (walkathons led by Rahul Gandhi), had an erratic pan-Indian electoral impact; as a result, it partly reclaimed its lost political space. The mandate failed to reverse the deinstitutionalization process of the grand old party, and its fragmentary legitimization seems to be by default rather than design. It failed to register a win and make a comeback primarily due to the absence of party offices in several states and hesitancy in overhauling the Congress system. The way ahead for revivification includes tweaking its archaic ideology, designing a populist model of governance, promoting subaltern leadership, creating a perennial connectivity with citizens, embracing digitalized politicking, and practising aspiration-centric developmental politics.