THE CONGRESS’S NEGATIVE POLITICS: A PARTY LOST IN ITS OWN ECHO CHAMBER

 In politics, as in life, no institution, party, or nation can build its future on a negative agenda. Pakistan, for instance, defined itself through hostility towards India and could never evolve into a stable, respected nation. The Indian National Congress, regrettably, seems to have taken a similar route — defining its entire existence by attacking the BJP rather than rebuilding its own moral and political core.

At the national level, the Congress under Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi appears confused, reactive, and bereft of purpose. Rahul Gandhi’s politics thrives on opposition for its own sake — a perpetual campaign of denunciation, grievance, and self-pity. Instead of proposing credible alternatives or policy roadmaps, he reduces national discourse to a tired narrative of caste, community, and imagined victimhood. His speeches lack depth, his rhetoric divides rather than unites, and his leadership has driven capable figures like P. Chidambaram, Shashi Tharoor, and Manish Tewari to the sidelines. The Congress today is not an institution of ideas but a stage for Rahul’s impulsive theatrics, with Kharge reduced to the role of ceremonial guardian.

In Karnataka, the picture is no brighter. The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government mirrors the party’s national malaise — high on rhetoric, low on delivery. Law and order has declined sharply, the state’s roads are in disrepair, and public institutions like schools and hospitals are starved of funds and direction. Government employees’ salaries  remain unpaid for months, contractors’ bills have piled up into thousands of crores, and the state exchequer is practically drained. Yet the leadership prefers to wage a daily war of words with the Centre, blaming it for every failing, as if attacking Delhi could mask its own inefficiency in Bengaluru.

What the Karnataka Congress seems to have perfected is the art of diversion. Whenever public discontent rises, the party launches a volley of accusations against the BJP or the Union government, hoping to camouflage its own inertia. But people are not blind. After nearly three years of unfulfilled promises and administrative stagnation, they are beginning to feel betrayed — much as they did under the previous BJP dispensation. The result is a deepening cynicism: two successive governments, different in colour but identical in conduct.

At its core, the Congress’s problem is philosophical, not electoral. It has forgotten that leadership is about vision, not vilification. A responsible opposition must hold the government accountable — yes — but also offer the nation a positive alternative, a reason to hope. Rahul Gandhi’s brand of politics, built on provocation and perpetual protest, does the opposite. It weakens institutions, divides citizens, and demeans the dignity of democratic debate.

India needs an opposition that thinks, not one that merely reacts. Until the Congress learns that governance is not theatre and criticism is not vision, it will continue to drift — a once-great party lost in the noise of its own echo chamber.