There was a time when the Congress party ruled India with the kind of arrogance only a party convinced of its own immortality can possess. Today, it cannot even announce a Chief Minister without looking like a family WhatsApp group fighting over ancestral property. Kerala has just given the Congress-led UDF a massive victory. A historic one. The sort of victory parties usually celebrate with chest-thumping speeches, victory marches, and giant cutouts of leaders smiling like toothpaste models. Instead, what did the Congress do?

It has converted victory into a tragicomedy performed in slow motion. The election results came on the 4th of May, and today is the 10th. By the time the Congress high command decides who should become Chief Minister, the next election manifesto may also be ready. Every passing hour has become free content for the CPM social media machinery. Somewhere in AKG Centre, overworked meme creators are probably demanding overtime pay.

And why not? The Congress has once again demonstrated its greatest talent. Taking a politically advantageous situation and turning it into a public spectacle of confusion.

The BJP does this nationally. The CPM does this in Kerala. They dominate the narrative before breakfast. The Congress, meanwhile, is still trying to locate the charger for its political phone. The problem with Congress is not ideology or secularism, nor is it organisation. The problem is that the party has become a museum where every exhibit says, “Do Not Touch.” Nothing changes, nobody leaves, and nobody retires. And nobody is........

© Mathrubhumi English