Does Congress have a game plan for 2014?

Over the past three years, the Congress government has floundered on all fronts of governance. The party itself has been a divided house after YSR's passing away in 2009.

His successor Rosaiah did not enjoy YSR's stature and therefore could not carry the party along, the way his popular predecessor could. However, Rosaiah did not last very long, thanks to the outbreak of the Telangana agitation in late November 2009 leading to the Centre's December 9, 2009 announcement on the separate state. Things only went from bad to worse from then on.
The Seemandhra MPs threatened to resign the very next day and a rattled Centre hastily backtracked, adding to the confusion.

Suddenly, the TRS gained ground and TJAC became an umbrella organization championing the Telangana cause in the full glare of television cameras from all over the country.
Rosaiah's successor Kiran Kumar Reddy was and is still seen as a 'Peter Pan' in politics—someone who cannot and will not grow. His Cabinet colleagues and peers in the party have scant regard for him and have demonstrated this publicly on several occasions. As a result, Kiran Kumar has been leading a firefighting exercise from the time that he assumed power. His rift with the deputy chief minister, Damodara Raja Narasimha is a case in point.

Earlier, he had a running feud with the APCC president Botsa Satyanarayana and even today cannot get along with many of his Cabinet colleagues and MPs, particularly those from the Telangana region. As a result of his preoccupation with the infighting in the party and his ego clashes with his colleagues, Kiran Kumar has not been able to deliver as a chief minister. 
It would be apt to say that governance has suffered in his tenure thus far. Prolonged power cuts, rising prices, shortage of seeds and essential commodities have only made matters worse for the chief minister and his party.

His much-publicised Indiramma Baata and Rachabanda programmes have not quite taken off. They have not yielded the sort of political dividends that the Congress party had expected of them.
The state finances are in a complete mess and the government has had to cut down expenditure on important schemes such as Arogyasri and fee reimbursement. The decision to pull back on these path-breaking schemes launched by YSR proved to be politically suicidal for the Kiran Kumar Reddy government and the Congress.
It is no surprise that the massive crowds that have been thronging Sharmila's public meetings along her padayatra are an indication of people's expectations with respect to the YSRCP.
Conversely, it is also a reflection of public anger against the Congress and their desire to bring a political alternative in the form of the YSRCP to power in AP.

It is obvious even to a lay observer that the immediate future of the Congress looks bleak.
What would be the gameplan of the party for the 2014 elections? Judging from some of the comments of party seniors including Renuka Chowdary in recent days, the Congress is all set to unleash a wide range of sops to woo voters back to its fold. As things stand, it has lost the confidence of its traditional vote banks such as the minorities, BCs, SCs and STs.
If it has to ride back to power, it has to pull out all stops in terms of doling out special packages and sops across the board.

Therefore, the Congress is leaving no stone unturned in its political strategy to garner votes. For instance its move to induct MPs from AP into the Union Cabinet can be seen as a step in this direction. 
The High Command thinks that every possible move on the political chessboard needs to be made at this point in order to keep its vote share intact and try and bring the Congress back to power in AP.
This in turn, will have a crucial bearing on the fate of the UPA formation in national politics in the 2014 polls.
The days to come will reveal if the tables will turn for the ruling Congress or whether it is rapidly going downhill.

-Reshmi@Sakshipost