In this atmosphere of doom and gloom, it must have occurred to not a few Congressmen that in view of the dauphin's prolonged adolescence and with their ingrained servility preventing them from looking outside the family for a leader, the party's spell in the wilderness may not end any time soon.
Two possibilities arise from this scenario. One is that there will be a rupture of the kind when Sharad Pawar and Co broke away because they realized that the glass ceiling of the dynasty ruled out any upward mobility for them. But the Nationalist Congress Party's record does not inspire any confidence in such an adventurous step. Even then, since politics is a matter of bread and butter for politicians, the Congressmen cannot afford to wait indefinitely for the party to revive.
The other is that they will indeed wait for the party to come to life, not as a result of any special effort on its own but because of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) missteps. If the Congress is dependent on the dynasty, the BJP at present is a one-man party with no one other than Narendra Modi to hold it together and lead it to success. If, by any chance, he stumbles, the Congress can hope to sneak back into the corridors of power.
