India’s oldest national party isn’t being defeated anymore — it is collapsing under the weight of its own inertia. Bihar’s crushing loss wasn’t a shock; it was an inevitability. A party that once shaped India’s destiny can’t even shape its booth strategy today. While allies sweat, organize, mobilize, and build structures, congress leaders still expect victory to arrive at their doorstep like a courier package.
And nowhere is this decay more visible than in tamil Nadu’s ground machinery — or the lack of it.
🧱 1. The bihar Debacle: Not an Accident, But a Pattern
congress did not merely “lose” Bihar; it demonstrated, once again, its complete inability to fight an election on its own feet.
While regional parties run cyber cells, booth offices, constituency war rooms, and hyper-local volunteer networks, congress units in many states continue to operate with a pre-2010 mindset. Leadership posts are taken as ornamental positions, not responsibilities.
The result?
Empty booths. Empty strategies. Empty accountability.
bihar just exposed what every alliance partner already knows but never says aloud:
You can’t outsource hard work to the DMK, RJD, or anyone else forever.
🗳️ 2. tamil Nadu Example: A National party Without Ground Workers
tamil Nadu has one of the most competitive electoral ecosystems in India. Parties live or die by booth-level discipline, not television debates.
Yet on the ground, you see three dominant parties maintaining recognised and active booth-level presence:
DMK
AIADMK
BJP
These parties have booth agents, poll-day cadres, ground-level checkers, ward-level squads, whatsapp marshals — the whole machinery.
And Congress?
A national party that relies on DMK to do its booth work.
Even as an alliance partner, congress behaves like a guest who expects to be fed, entertained, and carried to victory — without so much as lifting a chair.
🚧 3. BJP’s TN Reality: No Vote Bank, But Relentless Work
Whether one likes the bjp or not, one truth cannot be denied: their cadres show up. Everywhere. Consistently.
Even in regions where the party has little traditional vote share, their workers:
Attend training camps
Build booth committees
Maintain BLA-like structures
Track voters
Coordinate on polling day
And most importantly, they show effort
That is how a party with no major legacy in tamil Nadu has built visibility, structure, and presence.
Contrast this with Congress’s ground force, which often resembles a whatsapp group that only wakes up during seat-sharing negotiations.
💺 4. The Seat-Share Audacity: 117 Seats Without Fieldwork?
This is where the hypocrisy becomes blinding.
A party that:
Doesn’t build booth teams
Doesn’t invest in the local organisation
Doesn’t maintain polling-day discipline
Doesn’t nurture cadres
Doesn’t contest vigorously in non-alliance states
…still demands 117 seats in tamil Nadu during elections.
On what basis?
Legacy? Emotion? history lessons?
Electoral politics is not nostalgia.
It is stamina. Structure. Sweat. Data. Strategy. Presence.
Demanding seats without doing groundwork isn’t just arrogance — it’s disrespect to the ally carrying the weight.
⚔️ 5. The Harsh Truth: congress Must Work, Not Just Negotiate
Parties like DMK and RJD have repeatedly absorbed the hit when congress underperforms. They do the heavy lifting, only for congress to demand a disproportionate share of credit and seats.
The message from voters in bihar, and the warning from tamil Nadu, is the same:
You can’t sleepwalk into elections and expect allies to drag you to victory.
If congress wants to survive, it needs:
Cadres
Booth workers
Real BLAs
local communication teams
On-the-ground training
Intra-party accountability
Younger leadership with spine and strategy
No more seats.
🔥 FINAL WORD
Congress’s crisis isn’t ideological.
It isn’t generational.
It isn’t even leadership alone.
It is structural rot.
A party that refuses to work cannot blame the world when it loses.
bihar is not the last warning.
It is the latest.
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