"Each political epoch needs a leader and a visionary who changes the traditional paradigm of society to face contemporary challenges." This statement seems rather relevant today for the Congress party. Paradoxically, this statement was made by the Congress itself in Hyderabad in 2006. With the demise of the one-party system that was the Congress, and the Congress incapable of forming a government at the centre on its own, the party decided to accept the inevitable, that is to lead a coalition government. It was in this context that the Congress under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi adopted a resolution in Panchmarhi in 1997, hinting that the party would not hesitate to form a coalition government.In 2004, the Congress finally led a rainbow coalition called the UPA and in Hyderabad in 2006, the party passed a resolution justifying its act. It said, "At present coalition of political forces and opinion is inevitable." The above statement was the extension and a justification for the change of strategy to meet contemporary challenges. It highlighted two things -Sonia was resilient and led the party to a coalition understanding in the first decade of new century. She changed the dynamics of the party and created a new eco system which led the party to rule for ten years.But in later years, the party has refused to read the writing on the wall and continued with the old paradigm and paid the price in 2014 with a huge defeat. There is an old saying - "Success has a self-destructive logic." The logic which worked so wonderfully for the Congress in 2009 failed miserably in 2014. And now it is feeling the heat internally too. There is a serious danger to its existence. The new rebellion in Maharashtra, Assam and Haryana is symptomatic of an old disease whose cure has not been found yet. I don't want to say that rebellion in Congress is new. Mrs Indira Gandhi lost the election badly in 1977 and Brahmanand Reddy split the party, formed his own Congress. In 1994, Arjun Singh and Narayan Dutta Tewari formed the Tewari Congress when Narasimha Rao was at the helm of the affairs. Mamta Bannerji, G. K. Moopnar and Sharad Pawar left the Congress in a huff. I am deliberately not mentioning the syndicate vs Indira Gandhi conflict in the late 60s.But the present crisis is different - it is existential crisis. The party had an all-India infrastructure, it had a substantial number of members of parliament, the opposition was not that strong, there was no threat to Nehruvian consensus and the Congress leadership was not that vulnerable. Today the Congress eco-system is shattered. The party infrastructure is too weak to handle the onslaught of right-wing challenges. The party is virtually non-existent in Gujarat, MP, UP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Bengal, Odissa, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In Punjab it's facing a serious threat from the Aam Aadmi Party. In Delhi, it has disappeared.The BJP has done the unthinkable. It has a majority of its own and is led by the most ruthless of BJP leaders, who can be called the first mega "Technician of Power" after Indira Gandhi. The political eco-system has moved from left to right. Nehruvian secularism is under grave threat and nobody in the Congress knows who is calling the shots - Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi. Rahul was projected as a future leader but despite being young, he failed to inspire the party cadres and he seems to have been virtually rejected with demands rising every day to pass the baton to Priyanka Gandhi. The dithering in Congress is so strong and Rahul's grip so non-existent that finally Sonia has had to intervene in Delhi to prevent MLAs from crossing over to other parties.The party faces serious ideological questions. The party which had ushered in the new economic boom in the country by unleashing market forces in 1991 is now seen to be moving to the left. The party which brought in the RTI revolution is facing serious corruption charges. The party about whom U. N. Dhebar has said, "What is the Congress? It is a tear fallen from the sufferings and agonised hearts of humanity, coming to life" seems to have deserted those values. The problem with the Congress is that the rich and the poor, the upper castes and the lower castes, all are angry with it. It has lost the confidence of society at large. And it's supposed leader is refusing to don the mantle of the leader. He refuses to be the leader of the Congress parliamentary party.

The party needs new oxygen. It needs a new leadership and a new ideological cohesion. Being out of power is an opportunity to rebuild the organisation and rebrand. It is the "Labour moment" for the Congress but it needs a Tony Blair. Congress doesn't have one.