As Rahul Gandhi leads the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the basic questions about the Congress still remain. It has lost not just elections but also prominent names who have either crossed over to the BJP or started their own parties.In a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia, academic and political scientist Zoya Hasan, who has just written a book on the problems in the party, traces the roots of its problems to the 1960s when the Congress began to face a joint opposition.“The party has not really recovered from the centralisation of power (in the 1970s),” she says, adding that the party has an “ideological crisis” about how to deal with majoritarianism.On the dissidents and those who have left the party, Hasan says they want power on a platter and are not rebelling because of basic ideological reasons. “The party has diminished, but not vanished. It has 19% of the vote, which suggests that many Indians believe in pluralism.”She says the party could try a non-Gandhi as the leader, but it will still be an “unequal playing field no matter who runs the Congress” because of the BJP’s access to funds and the support of the media.She also says that BJP’s call for a “Congress-mukt Bharat” or a “Congress-free India” has less to do with the party than BJP’s idea of India. Hasan says that BJP wishes for the country to become a one-party state.