What will Congress do post Delhi polls drubbing?

NEW DELHI: After being completely blanked out, "what next" was uppermost in the minds of Congressmen as gloom descended on the party headquarters on Tuesday. Coming after a series of miserable defeats, the washout in Delhi left them at a total loss as even the mantra of "Priyanka lao, party bachao" seemed to be ringing hollow.

Although the slogan was raised in the morning, there are firm signals from the first family that only Rahul Gandhi would succeed mother Sonia. So after the trashing in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand in recent months, where does Congress go from here?

There are no easy answers. Insiders insist the party has confronted such crises in the past-it has faced splits and extended periods out of power. But the present one poses a challenge like never before. There is a strong national rival in Modi-led BJP and entrenched regional parties to contend with-a formidable field of competition to overcome, and that too, under the leadership of Rahul who seems a reluctant politician.

As the emergence of AAP threatens Congress in the "secular" firmament, as the new brand of "inclusive" politics, the Congress could be badly hit in urbanized states where the grand old party is a force like in Punjab.

Worse, the emergence of new challengers coincides with a weakened and faction-ridden Congress organization that is no longer the mobilization machine of yore. The party seems incapable of dealing with the political idiom that has changed drastically with aspirational youth and have-nots flexing their muscle.

The emphasis on corruption and delivery-that Modi used to slay the UPA and which Arvind Kejriwal has now deployed to stunning effect-has Congress confounded. The party didn't see them as issues which could sway voters in the past and is still grappling with them.

The phenomenon of social media and the strategy of importing talent have still not caught the party's imagination. Congress was the first to tap into the possibility of inducting lateral entries from other fields, a la Nandan Nilekani and Shashi Tharoor, but the experiment has largely been a non-starter because powerful insiders consider them as interlopers eating into their space-and pie.

Given these handicaps, the post-Delhi scenario may be ominous for the Congress. The 'Old Guard vs Gen-Next' face-off could intensify in coming days because veterans may find a voice in this moment of weakness and try to put Rahul on the back foot. Any in-house bloodletting would only distract from the immediate challenge of closing ranks and finding solutions to the fast-changing politics.

With no realistic maneuvering space for the leadership front, AICC managers argue the best thing to do for the Congress is to keep quiet and bide its time until the popular mood changes - in short, passivity while it waits for BJP to make mistakes.