There was a time when the Indian National Congress did not need an introduction in the villages of India. It was the introduction. From 24 Akbar Road—or earlier, Teen Murti—to the remotest hamlet accessible only by bullock cart and patience, the Congress organisation breathed through its workers.
They were not spectators of politics; they were its foot soldiers, messengers, organisers, and often its conscience.
Today, that once-vast human network has thinned to the point where the Congress worker has become a political rarity—spoken of nostalgically, sighted occasionally, but rarely encountered.
Historically, the Congress was a party of the masses not merely because it claimed to represent them, but because it was embedded among them. Its organisational lattice ran deep and wide—national, state, district, block, mandal, booth, village. Every layer had functionaries who knew the local caste equations, land disputes, schoolteacher scandals, ration-shop politics, and the pulse of grievance and aspiration.
The party’s strength lay not just in charismatic leaders but in ordinary men and women who proudly identified as Congress workers.
Rise and Erosion
Youth Congress, Seva Dal, NSUI— these were not ornamental appendages. They were training grounds. The Youth Congress was once a badge of political ambition; Seva Dal volunteers were visible in khaki uniforms, managing crowds, organising relief during floods, and instilling discipline; NSUI units dominated campuses, producing leaders who cut their teeth in debate, mobilisation, and agitation. Membership carried prestige, identity, and purpose. A Congress worker was somebody.
The shift to personality politics deprioritised grassroots work, leaving the Congress worker increasingly marginal within the party structure.
That ecosystem began to erode during the post–Rajiv Gandhi years. The reasons are many, but the consequences are unmistakable. As electoral politics became increasingly leader-centric and media-driven, the slow, unglamorous work of cadre-building was deprioritised.
Organisational elections were postponed or manipulated. Local leaders were bypassed in favour of parachuted candidates. Loyalty began to matter more than legwork. The worker, once the backbone of the party, was gradually reduced to a background prop—useful during elections, dispensable thereafter.
Organisation Over Legacy
Contrast this with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party. While the Congress relied on inherited legacy and episodic mobilisation, the RSS invested relentlessly in organisation. Daily shakhas, ideological training, volunteer discipline, social work, and booth-level micro-management became second nature. The BJP, learning from this ecosystem, built a political machine that knows every voter, every booth, every marginal swing. Its workers may disagree among themselves, but they never doubt their relevance to the party.
The BJP built a relentless booth-level machine. The Congress watched its own cadre network drift into near invisibility.
The Congress, meanwhile, has watched its frontal organisations fade into near invisibility. Ask an average college student today about NSUI, and you are likely to receive a blank stare or a historical footnote. Youth Congress survives more as a press release than a movement. Seva Dal, once the party’s disciplined volunteer corps, is now remembered mainly during anniversaries. The Congress worker, where he or she still exists, no longer feels seen, heard, or valued.
The Psychological Cost of Neglecting Cadres
This decline has serious implications. Politics is not fought only on television studios or social media timelines; it is fought booth by booth, household by household. Without an energised cadre, the Congress struggles to counter misinformation, mobilise voters, or even protect its own votes on polling day. Elections become personality contests rather than organisational battles — and in such contests, the Congress is often outgunned.
Equally damaging is the psychological toll. When workers feel dispensable, commitment erodes. Why spend years building a base if tickets are distributed from above, alliances decided without consultation, and defeats blamed on nameless “organisational weaknesses”? The party risks becoming a shell - symbol, history, and rhetoric without the living tissue that once animated it.
A Party Without Its Foot Soldiers
Yet, it would be a mistake to declare the Congress worker extinct. Endangered, yes—but not beyond revival. The party still possesses a unique legacy, emotional resonance, and social diversity unmatched by any other national formation. What it lacks is the will to rebuild from the ground up.
That means empowering frontal organisations, holding genuine internal elections, investing in political education, and restoring dignity to the worker’s role. It means accepting that social media virality cannot substitute for village-level presence, and that no leader, however charismatic, can replace an army of motivated cadres.
Without restoring dignity to its workers and rebuilding its grassroots machine, the Congress risks becoming a party of memory rather than momentum.
The Congress once produced workers who became leaders, not leaders who merely acquired workers. Reversing that equation is essential for its survival. Until then, the Congress worker will remain what the title suggests: an endangered species—remembered fondly, photographed occasionally, but increasingly absent from the political landscape where they once roamed in abundance.
(The author is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club USA, and Editor of ‘Indian Mountaineer’. He is also the founder of Bharatiya Yuva Shakti, an organisation that ensures good leadership at the village level. He tweets @AkhilBakshi1. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)