Rahul Gandhi addresses a public rally in Muzaffarpur during 2010 Assembly elections in Bihar. Telegraph picture

Saharsa, Dec. 15: Calling the attention of Mister Rahul Gandhi, heir to the shrivelled realm of the once mighty Congress — your party, young man, is lurching to a cold and unattended cremation in Bihar.

Its leaders, the far and few left, are asleep in their frayed feather nests, its ranks have deserted station, its votaries are wheezing on expired emotion, too dispirited and anaemic even to hold up a flag. “I do actually have a flag wrapped up somewhere,” admits Ganganath Mishra, teacher and diehard Congress supporter, “but the thing is people will laugh if I bring it out, it’s embarrassing to be a Congressman these days, it is fair to say we are dead and nobody’s even weeping.”

It gets worse than that funereal lament. Consider Kumar Heera Prabhakar, spokesman for the Saharsa Congress, a man currently in the heady vortex of accomplishment. And what is it that has him in transports? The mean and mere fact that of the many who sent for garlands during chief minister Nitish Kumar’s three-day Seva Yatra of this district, he was among the few who managed to actually loop the VIP visitor’s reluctant neck. “I was the one to garland him,” Prabhakar whooped, “I was the one who took him on a tour of the Matsyagandha temple and pond complex, I was the one who he was paying attention to, I was that fortunate one.” And he is spokesman for the Congress party. Another curried word of receiving the favours of the chief minister of a rival formation and Prabhakar deserved to lose his job. The pity for the Congress is Prabhakar would probably not mind. There isn’t much left for Congressmen in these parts, not much as a spokesperson anyhow.

It is hard to remember the last time the state spokesperson of the Congress stood up and said something of note, never mind the clownish specimen they have handed the job to in Saharsa. As hard to fathom who that spokesperson might be. The Bihar Congress president himself is desperately courting anonymity, a personage by the name of Chaudhary Mehboob Ali Quaiser, who was humbled from his home seat of Simri Bakhtiyarpur, not far from Saharsa, in last year’s Assembly election. Since then he has barely stirred to make his presence felt.

But why blame Chaudhary Quaiser alone, a nawab by birth and a gentleman of leisure by preference? Much before Quaiser arrived on the scene, Bihar, and Saharsa, had been frittered away on the follies of his once-formidable predecessors. Saharsa was home to the late Lalit Narain Mishra, once considered the Number Two in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet, and younger brother Jagannath Mishra, who served several terms as chief minister. This was the Congress’s invincible fort, as was, verily, all of Bihar. Then, quite suddenly, the Congress collapsed, like a termite-ridden column gives to the slightest shove. Since then it has blundered time after time rather than rebuild. By the time it decided to unhinge itself from Lalu Prasad’s tail, it had already been reduced to sorry shape; Lalu’s infamy had eaten into what little was left of the ruins. As a senior old Congressman told The Telegraph, “Those of us who disagreed with the alliance were suffocated and eventually lost interest, those who went along suffered the same loss to credibility as Lalu.”

Rahul Gandhi’s go-it-alone decision during the last Assembly elections did stir a flame in the embers, but it wasn’t to last; there was nothing left for the flame to feed on. Instead of attempting a vigorous revival, Congress bosses resorted to short-cut methods. They pulled away from Lalu only to fall into the lap of a dissident faction of the ruling JD(U). Discards from the Nitish Kumar camp like former state JD(U) president Rajesh “Lallan Singh” Ranjan became the Congress’s guiding lights and led it to an inglorious nadir: three seats in the Assembly. The go-it-alone call left the Congress terribly lonely.

Bihar, as Uttar Pradesh where elections will soon become due, is critical to any prospects of a Congress revival nationally. But the signs are all there the party has not learnt from past mistakes and remains in denial over its bottom-of-the-grave location. It is bereft of ideas, shorn of energy, devoid of leadership and yet suicidally non-cognizant of lapsed glory. Here’s how: In Chhapra’s Daraundha, where an Assembly bypoll was held recently, the Congress claims a membership of about 20,000. Counting revealed only 4,000-odd had voted for the Congress candidate. It could only be one of two things: either the party’s membership figures are fraudulent or many of them are no longer loyal to the forms they signed up on. In Laukaha, more recently, the Congress netted less than 5,000 votes. Membership figures for the Laukaha region are not available but it falls in Mithila’s Jhanjharpur belt, once dominated by the powerful Mishra family. But what’s to be said of the Congress now? The Mishras themselves have crossed over to the JD(U). Lalit Narain Mishra’s nephew and Jagannath Mishra’s son, Nitish, is a minister in the government run by his senior namesake. The family that was once synonymous with Congress ascendancy in Bihar is not among the mourners. That’s how lonely your party’s Bihar cortege is, Mister Gandhi.