Has anything really changed? In 1977, Mrs Gandhi suffered a most humiliating defeat. She lost her own Rae Bareilly seat to Raj Narain, universally acknowledged as the buffoon of Indian politics; her son Sanjay was trounced in neighbouring Amethi by a village wrestler. Yet, three years later -- notwithstanding another damaging split in her party -- Mrs Gandhi astounded the world by leading the Congress to a handsome victory. In the end, it was her image that proved crucial. With little more than a ramshackle organisation and hamstrung by a relative shortage of funds, she personally visited some 300 constituencies and addressed 1,500 public meetings. It was a devastatingly inspired performance that one foreign correspondent recorded thus: "As she drove through the countryside at night, she sat in the front seat of a Peugeot switching on a battery-operated strip of fluorescent light when crowds appeared, revealing her familiar austere features and dishevelled grey hair, modestly enveloped in her sari. It was an exalted image bathed in eerie radiance." Even the Mahatma could not have done better.

And today? The Congress president is taunted by his partymen and dubbed a "stooge" of Bihar strongman Laloo Prasad Yadav by Jagannath Mishra, a former chief minister of the state. In 1989, when he was plagued by the Bofors controversy and taunted for turning Italy into India's country-in-law, Rajiv was sufficiently in demand to visit 340 constituencies; and in 1991, before the human bomb killed him in Sriperumbudur, he had covered 115 constituencies. True, in 1996 Rao spoke in scores of indifferently-attended meetings and the Congress poster most in demand was laced with the slogan "Ma, beta ka yeh balidan, yaad rakhega Hindustan (the country will remember the sacrifice of mother and son)", but at least he was a sitting prime minister and a communicator. Kesri has absolutely nothing to commend for himself. There is, in fact, a quasi-serious suggestion that if the Congress doesn't print posters of Kesri for the election, either the UF or the BJP should do it for them.

Curiously, Kesri is undeterred by such carping. His self-image is that of an ordinary Congress worker who has risen through the ranks. He boasts that at least 200 different groups of Congress workers get themselves photographed with him daily. "Each day my photographs are displayed in 200 different villages," he claims.

But this is a boast that has few takers. Which is perhaps why he has pinned his hopes on electoral arithmetic and a pro-poor and pro-minority image. He hopes to enter into alliances with Laloo's Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar and revive the understanding with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh and extend it to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. In the process, he will, however, be ignoring the remaining few in the party who can still attract voters. The nine-member Coordination Committee for the polls is packed entirely with Rajya Sabha members and of the seven members in the Manifesto Committee, only N.D. Tiwari belonged to the dissolved House. Particularly noticeable is the exclusion of regional heavyweights like Pawar, Scindia and Arjun Singh -- all potential prime ministerial candidates -- from the Coordination Committee. Says a bitter former MP: "Kesriji is too busy fighting a battle within his own party to take on other parties." To dissident leader Rajesh Pilot, these developments are ominous. "Tolerance of dissent is disappearing from the party," he says.

More than dissent it is inspiration that is posing the real problem. Senior Congressmen still believe the party has a chance since it remains the best known national brand. If it has lost out on market share, it is because of the ineptitude of the CEO. They feel that in making the Congress' politics totally dependent on electoral arithmetic, the party president is in danger of losing sight of the larger picture.

In Gujarat, for example, the party remains as confused as ever about whether to go it alone or ally with Shankersinh Vaghela's Rashtriya Janata Party; in West Bengal, it doesn't want to offend the CPI(M) too much -- due to national anti-BJP compulsions -- and is in danger of losing its doughty campaigner, Mamata Banerjee. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, it cannot countenance the idea of rebuilding the party brick by brick. And in Madhya Pradesh, it is steadily conceding ground to the BSP.

Many of these problems could have been realistically dealt with if the Congress was willing to reconcile itself to an honest stint in opposition. The capacity to take adversity in its stride is, however, absent. The Congress has developed such a macabre fascination for office that it cannot conceive of life without the power to disburse patronage. Kesri promised to end the coalition interregnum and the Congress decided to give him a chance to get the party back on track. The satraps imagined he was a stop-gap choice and a strategic respite from the real battle for the party's future. Somehow, everybody forgot that coalitions with outside support are inherently fragile and that the 11th Lok Sabha could be dissolved abruptly. Come February, and the Congress is presented with two disconcerting options: running a faceless campaign or wheeling after a leader whose presence is not calculated to win votes. For the Congress, 1998 will truly be a campaign with a difference. It may even be the election that will, to modify Rajiv's immortal words, Congress ko naani yaad dila degi.

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