Why can't Congress recognise the realities and offer realistic solutions?

Rahul Gandhi's two recent video performances offer little hope - the first fell flat in attacking govt 'strategy'; and the second showed him in a position unbecoming of a leader - writes T N Ninan

Any government needs a good opposition — to act as a check by presenting the threat of an alternative. For the last six years, India has not had one. The regional parties have been marginalised, coerced into silence or bought over, and the Congress has had poor leadership from Rahul Gandhi. His mother, also his predecessor and successor as party president, appears to be preparing the ground for his return by side-stepping one set of ageing, unelectable advisors to appoint another younger set of the same. And so Mr Gandhi, like Robert Bruce’s spider, may try yet again to project