Rahul Gandhi: Can the long march bring the Indian Congress party back in the modern era?

• Over 100 members of Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party will go with him on his mission to “unite India.”
• It will take 3,570km (2,218 miles) and five months to travel across 12 states.
• Since Mr Modi’s election as prime minister of India in 2014, the Congress has been on a free slide.

 The leader of India’s largest opposition party will start a long march across the nation on Wednesday.

Over 100 members of Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party will go with him on his mission to “unite India.” It will take 3,570km (2,218 miles) and five months to travel across 12 states. Mr Gandhi will meet individuals while travelling and stay in temporary quarters at night. Songs that convey the theme of the walk will be played while it is live-streamed on a website.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India March) is fundamentally a political protest against the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi (BJP). “To maintain the concept of India that is written in the Constitution, we are in many respects engaged in an existential war. The march’s message is that we are the party that can unify India and put an end to the ruling party’s efforts to divide us along racial, religious, and linguistic lines “Senior Congressman Shashi Tharoor told me.

The march is equally an attempt at reviving the flagging spirits of an exhausted party and beefing up the sagging image of its leader. “We are going out to listen to people, not to give them lectures,” Jairam Ramesh, another party leader, said.

People should always be listened to. Since Mr Modi’s election as prime minister of India in 2014, the Congress has been on the free slide. The BJP has destroyed it in back-to-back federal elections, and it has lost 40 of 45 state polls. The party is beset by dissension and currently only controls a meagre two states.

Apart from a vision of a secular India, it is unclear what the Congress, which has lost most of its core voters to the BJP, stands for. Gandhi himself has frequently come across as a reticent leader.

It won’t be simple to revive the Congress in the face of a ferociously resourceful and resourceful adversary like the BJP. Many people think that a march like this can only become the focal point of a national movement against the government if it is led by a well-liked figure.

There is still no proof that Mr Gandhi is well-liked; a recent poll found that only 9% of the 120,000 or so respondents favoured him over Mr Modi for the position of next prime minister. Rahul Gandhi has constantly shown a total lack of connection with the public and has not a shred of credibility left, according to Baijayant Jay Panda, a national vice-president of the BJP. “No public campaign can succeed without its leader having a fundamental amount of credibility.

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