For years, the Congress high command has been accused of rewarding proximity over performance. In Kerala, however, the party appears to have acknowledged a political reality it can no longer ignore: elections are won on the ground, not in Delhi’s drawing rooms. The decision to elevate V.D. Satheesan as chief minister after the Congress-led UDF’s emphatic return to power is significant not merely because of who won the internal contest, but because of what the choice reveals about the changing balance within the party. Mr Satheesan represented organisation, agitation, electoral credibility, and ideological clarity inside Kerala.

His rival represented access to the national leadership. The Congress eventually chose the former. That choice was neither automatic nor entirely ideological. It was driven by cold political calculation. Kerala delivered the Congress one of its most important victories in recent years, at a time when the party continues to struggle nationally against the BJP’s electoral machinery and regional parties’ entrenched networks. The leadership could not afford to begin a fresh government by alienating alliance partners, grassroots workers and a state unit that believed the victory had been earned locally. The episode also underlines a broader truth about........

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