Doomsday seems to be approaching for the country's Opposition parties

If the Congress must burn down to rise again from the ashes, so too must the rest of the Opposition. Archis Mohan on why all hope of a robust Opposition is fading

It could not look any bleaker for India’s Opposition. It is not merely that the Congress, and its allies, are likely to keel over in the assembly polls that will be held in Haryana and Maharashtra a few days from now, and subsequently in Jharkhand a couple of months from now. Such is the expected decimation that Opposition leaders believe that October 24, the day of the poll results, could come to mark the day that ended all hope, at least in the near future, for the Opposition in India.

The sense of diminishing hope has emanated from repeated electoral