The Congress is rediscovering the power of street protest

Congress leaders have a spring in their steps these days.

With the Narendra Modi government under fire for a wide range of issues, the mood in the grand old party is upbeat. After meeting its representatives, one comes away with the impression that they are within touching distance of power.

Chief Election Commissioner “Gyanesh Kumar has given a tangible form to the whole vote chori scam”, a Congress MP said to me this week, referring to his party’s year-old campaign about alleged election rigging. “People have found one visible guy to understand that everything is not right. We are gathering them around a simple demand” – for Kumar’s resignation.

Another politician from the party, this one from eastern India, claimed that the Modi government’s days are numbered. He harked back to the years leading up to defeat of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2014, when it too was beleaguered by street protests.

The shift in approach is striking, given that Congress leaders until just a few months ago were offering esoteric explanations for why this was neither the right time nor the right way to protest.

In fact, at a meeting of the Opposition INDIA bloc in June, Rahul Gandhi himself had questioned the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign’s demand for the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan,...

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