The Congress party is currently debugging its own demise. It’s a legacy software company trying to push a major OS update on 1990s hardware, and the blue screen of death is flickering from Guwahati to Kochi. You’d think a party facing an existential threat would close ranks. Instead, they’re arguing over who gets to hold the steering wheel while the car is already submerged in the lake.

In Assam, the rot is structural. It’s not just that they lost; it’s that they’ve forgotten how to win. Ever since Himanta Biswa Sarma walked out the door in 2015—taking the party’s entire operational playbook and most of the local servers with him—the Congress has been playing a perpetual game of catch-up. They’re running on vibes and nostalgia in a terrain that has moved on to hard infrastructure and ruthless identity politics. The "Grand Old Party" feels less like a political powerhouse and more like a defunct MySpace page. People remember it existed, but nobody’s logging in. The specific friction here is the "loyalty tax." Local leaders are tired of waiting for a central command that only communicates via encrypted messages and vague platitudes. They want resources; they get press releases.

Then there’s Kerala. On paper, it’s their stronghold. In reality, it’s a sandbox for massive egos. The factionalism between the Sudhakaran and Satheesan camps isn't about policy; it's about territory. It’s a localized civil war where the primary objective isn't defeating the Left, but ensuring the "other guy" in your own party doesn't get the credit. When a party spends 80% of its energy and 90% of its oxygen on internal policing, there’s nothing left for the actual voters. They’re burning through political capital just to stay stationary. It’s a terrible ROI.

Let’s talk about the specific trade-off the party makes every election cycle: the "rebellion" fee. Every time a middle-tier leader feels ignored, they start flirting with the BJP or a regional outfit. The Congress then has to waste weeks—and a massive chunk of their dwindling war chest—on "outreach" that is basically just political hush money. It’s an expensive way to keep people who don't want to be there. Meanwhile, the voters see a brand that is perpetually in "Recovery Mode."

The four-state battleground isn't a unified front. It’s a series of disconnected glitches. In Haryana, the internal power struggle is so loud it drowns out the genuine anti-incumbency sentiment on the ground. The Hooda camp and the "SRK" trio (Selja, Surjewala, and Kiran Choudhry) operate like rival startups trying to disrupt each other rather than the incumbent government. In Maharashtra, they’re the junior partner in a firm they used to own. They’re being diluted. It’s a slow-motion acquisition where the Congress brand is being stripped for parts by more agile regional players.

The leadership’s solution is usually another "Yatra" or a catchy slogan. But you can't fix a broken backend with a new UI. The voters aren't stupid. They see the lag. They see the bugs. They see a party that is more interested in its own history than the country's future. It’s a platform built on "what used to be" in a market that only cares about "what’s next."

The Congress keeps acting like it’s too big to fail. But in the tech world—and increasingly in Indian politics—size is a liability if you can’t pivot. They’re currently a bloated, decentralized mess of competing interests, lacking a central server to sync the data. They aren't just divided; they’re fragmented into incompatible file formats.

If the party can't decide if it's a socialist vanguard, a secular bulwark, or just a family-run heritage site, why should the voter bother choosing? They’re trying to be everything to everyone and ending up as nothing to nobody. It’s a classic case of feature creep in a product that doesn’t even have a functioning core.

At this point, you have to wonder if the internal chaos is a bug or a feature. Maybe they’re content being the world’s most expensive debating society. After all, losing spectacularly is still a form of relevance, right? Or perhaps they’re just waiting for the ultimate system crash so they can finally stop pretending they know how to fix it.

Is the plan to actually win, or is the Congress just the longest-running "Coming Soon" page in political history?