Like pollution in Delhi, Indian National Congress's continuous downfall seems insurmountable: no solution is in sight, nor is any effort being made to find a way out.

With the Bihar rout, according to one estimate being circulated on social media, Rahul Gandhi is now five short of a century of leading his party to defeat since he emerged in 2003. A chart is doing its rounds, which shows a map of India listing the state assembly polls that the Congress has lost under his tutelage. "While many will call him a 9-to-5 blame game politician, Rahul Gandhi has now accumulated 95 electoral defeats in two decades, five short of a century. Is the attack on India's institutions a diversionary tactic by the silver-silver spoon scion?", reads the introduction to the map of the Congress's debacle after debacle.

It was 1989 when the Congress lost absolute power (thereafter it formed only coalition governments). That debacle began with the Congress defeat in Tamil Nadu. The party, despite its strength of 404 in the Lok Sabha, had been struggling to stem the Bofors scandal. The victory of renegade Vishwanath Pratap Singh in the Allahabad Lok Sabha by-poll in June 1988 had been followed by other electoral setbacks. The Tamil Nadu rout was thus deemed ominous in a year when Lok Sabha elections were due.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had visited Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, in the prelude to these electoral debacles. The chief editor of Navbharat Times, late Dr Rajendra Mathur, taking cue from the Hindi meaning of 'Harare', wrote an editorial: "Harare se Harare-arey, kabhi toe jitarey!" ("Defeat after defeat - win sometime!"). I wonder how Dr Mathur would have reacted to Rahul Gandhi's string of 95 reverses this time.

While celebrating Bihar victory with his party workers at the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national headquarters on........

© NDTV