The exit of Jyotiraditya Scindia and the crisis the Congress is currently facing in Madhya Pradesh are symptoms of a deep-rooted malaise affecting the grand old party. Scindia’s brief resignation letter to Congress interim president, Sonia Gandhi, stating that his step had been in the making for over a year points to the brewing discontent in one of the party’s top leaders and, more amazingly, that the party did little to stem it.

There are plenty of ‘loyalist’ voices now saying that Scindia was overrated and brought nothing substantial to the Congress table, especially after losing his family bastion Guna in 2019, but his departure is indicative of a rising turmoil in the younger guard of the party who see little or no future in their continuance in a party that effectively won India its freedom from the British over 70 years ago.

The trouble in Madhya Pradesh between the Kamal Nath-Digvijay Singh camp and the Scindia faction had been in the works ever since the Congress was voted to power by a wafer-thin majority in the 2018 Assembly election. Scindia, no doubt, felt he was unfairly denied the chief ministership as the party won the bulk of its seats from his stronghold, the Gwalior-Chambal region.

The Congress instead reposed its trust in the old war horse Kamal Nath as someone more capable of managing the slim majority, with the BJP, smarting over losing power after 15 years, breathing down his neck. The logical next step would have been to make Scindia the state Congress chief but one-and-a-half years later the post continues to be with Nath in defiance of the one-man one-post principle.

Scindia, who was named Congress general secretary in charge of western Uttar Pradesh before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, no doubt, felt hard done by as his was a thankless job given the abysmal state of the party in India’s most populous state. He may have also felt that his poor showing in his home constituency was because he was unable to campaign wholeheartedly there.

Whatever the provocation, Scindia’s decision to jump ship and join the BJP has come as a body blow to the already tottering Congress. It remains to be seen if other younger leaders follow suit as the party, caught in a tussle between the old and new guard, wrapped in a family drama that the country has outgrown, holds no future for ambitious politicians who want to carve a path for themselves while mouthing platitudes of serving country and state.

Rahul Gandhi’s decision to step down from the party president’s post after the 2019 drubbing was the opportunity for the Congress to reinvent itself but it squandered that chance. The Congress has risen from the ashes in the past but tied as it is to the fortunes of a single family, rudderless and leaderless, it remains to be seen if new life can be breathed into this moribund party that holds the key to an effective opposition against a resurgent BJP that looks invincible at the moment.