The Congress will make a mistake if it allows the BJP to seize the development slogan if the Grand Old party wants to win back voters, believes Shashi Tharoor, the four-term Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram.
“Why is it that in three elections now, we have stayed between 19.4 per cent, 19.6 per cent and 19.8 per cent [vote share]? Why is it we are not able to rise above that? It’s because the messages that we have been highlighting have apparently found that particular ceiling,” Tharoor told The Telegraph Online on Friday.
The former diplomat and author was in Kolkata as the chief guest at The Telegraph Online Edugraph 18 Under 18 Awards, 2025 that celebrated outstanding young achievers from across eastern India.
“The last election in which we got 26.7 per cent was an election where Dr Manmohan Singh was giving the message of being the voice of aspirational India, of the future, of development, growth etc, and I think that this is a message we cannot afford to abdicate to the BJP. Just as we cannot afford to abdicate nationalism to the BJP. The Congress should not allow people to forget it was the party of Indian nationalism,” Tharoor said.
The Congress has lost state after state and more so in the last decade of Narendra Modi’s rule, including some where it had once governed for decades. In Bengal, the party has only one MP, from the Malda South seat, and no legislators.
Tharoor admitted to the marginalisation of the Congress as a major power but also saw scope for revival.
“I will admit for us there are some states where we've already been pushed into a somewhat subsidiary role as a relatively smaller partner to a strong regional party. We are seeing this in Bihar and Tamil Nadu, for example. But a revival is not impossible if we capture the imagination of the voters and if we organise ourselves to be able to make a difference,” Tharoor said.
“Some of my colleagues are seeing the beginnings of a revival in Odisha, for example, where we have actually not been a factor in elections for more than two decades now. We can't afford to give up. As I said, in Tamil Nadu we have become – let's face it – a junior partner to the DMK but at least we are therefore part of the governing alliance. In Bihar, we have served that role partly and we could easily serve that role again and so on.”
In his home state Kerala, the Left Democratic Front is eyeing a third-straight term, something that has never happened in the southern state before.
“In the last election for the first time the people of Kerala re-elected the government. Their performance has not been great and people are looking for an alternative. So it is actually in many ways an opportunity to demonstrate to the public that we represent a constructive alternative,” Tharoor said.
Simply pointing out the Left’s failures won’t work; rather, what the Congress brings to the plate has to be spelt out.
Tharoor also reminded the Congress high command of the growing support on the ground for the BJP in Kerala, that has propped the party up vote-share-wise from a mere 6 per cent to 16.68 per cent in the last Lok Sabha polls, with one seat.
“There are voters in Kerala who are looking for a change but do not want to come to us. And we in the Congress need to capture that space before the BJP decides to step into it. The anti-incumbency votes for many years had only one place to go, us. And when we were in power, [they] went to the Left,” said Tharoor.
“In the Assembly they don’t have any seats yet. It is not seriously far off from translating these votes into seats.”
He said the Congress decision to strengthen the district committees across the country would go a long way for the party to rebuild the organisation.
Emphasising the need for the Congress to get its messaging correct with a right mix of economic growth, inclusive development and nationalism, Tharoor saw the apathy of India’s rising younger population towards politics as “alarming”.
He recounted a conversation that he had with young students some years ago who told him they were not interested in politics.
“I said it’s a pity because politics is interested in you. Politicians are making decisions that actually affect your lives, the subjects you study, what kind of taxes you have to pay, how it’s going to be spent,” said Tharoor, adding it was the political parties who have not been able to explain to the young minds why they need to be interested in politics.
“If you don't actually care about the kind of values you want to see your politicians promote, then you'll get people ruling over you whom you may not agree with, or who might do things that you don't like. So you have to care,” he said.
“What we have to do is, reach out to younger voters much more, mobilise them much more. Get more youngsters into our party. People talk about infusion of fresh blood, but not everyone has time to be involved full time in politics. Let's at least get those who can vote to come out and vote. That's very important,” he said.
The All-India Professional Congress, according to Tharoor, was working towards attracting bright minds from outside the conventional playgrounds of politics.
“They dealt with real issues and were able to bring a lot of professionals into the mix who had never been part of the political system. That was my whole concept. How do we engage this set of people by involving them in the issues that matter in politics, and that did succeed,” he said.
Having completed 16 years in Parliamentary politics last month – of which 11 have been in the Opposition benches – Tharoor said there had been tremendous changes, mostly towards the worse.
“When I hear, for example, some of the old speeches of Atal Bihari Vajpayee talking about how generous Prime Minister Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi were to him, I don’t see an equivalent today of anyone on my side of the aisle feeling that the government has in any way been generous to them. And that shows that there has been a genuine, to put it bluntly, decline in the kind of collegiality and bipartisanship that was possible once upon a time,” he said.
The four-time MP drew a comparison between the amount of work he had been able to carry out during his days as an MP of the Treasury benches and later on the other side to highlight the difficulties involved in clearing files and funds.
“In terms of my own ability to make a difference, I think I have to recognise that in a parliamentary system I can only make that difference if I am part of a party that is in power somewhere and can practically deliver concrete benefits to these citizens whether in the state or at the Centre or in both,” he said.