India, May 9 -- A DMK spokesperson in Chennai, in response to the Congress's decision to back Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), said that "the INDIA bloc is gone". Though the DMK hasn't formally announced its departure from the Opposition platform, the sentiment within the DMK is strongly against the Congress move. That has consequences for the INDIA bloc since the DMK, with 22 MPs, has been a key player in Opposition politics, especially in Parliament, and the Congress is the largest Opposition party with 99 seats. The DMK's importance for the INDIA bloc is not limited to the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu; the Dravidian major has been a consistent and vocal champion of the ideological agendas that the Opposition alliance has raised against the BJP and the NDA government in recent years. If the DMK chooses to distance itself from the INDIA bloc, which looks likely, it could be the beginning of the unravelling of the platform and even the isolation of the Congress within the larger Opposition space. The crisis could not have come at a worse time for the INDIA bloc. The election defeats of the TMC in West Bengal, CPM in Kerala, and the DMK in Tamil Nadu have robbed the bloc of leaders who championed federalism, a major issue that united the Opposition in Parliament and outside. The Congress gained Kerala and now holds office in three of the five southern states. But the party, historically, has been subdued in advancing the federal agenda. Early mobilisations that advocated more federal powers to the states and their cultural distinctions were, in fact, in opposition to the Congress's centrist tendencies - the DMK and CPM were at the forefront of this politics, which resulted in initiatives such as the Sarkaria Commission that called for better federal balance in the 1970s and 80s. The Congress is no longer in pole position in national politics and should have no issues with demanding more rights for the states. But can it convincingly make the case for federalism the way regional outfits such as the DMK did? With the footprint of regional parties shrinking - the JMM, TDP and the National Conference (NC) are the only regional parties that now run governments - the crisis of federalism faces the threat of being reduced to an academic debate. The contradictions within the INDIA bloc date back to the time of its formation in 2023. This big tent of non-BJP parties was visualised as a national platform, and it was accepted from the beginning that its members could compete with each other at the state level while agreeing at the national level. This implausibility of such a loose arrangement was exposed when regional considerations compelled Nitish Kumar to abandon the bloc and shift loyalty to the NDA. In West Bengal, bloc members competed and undercut each other. At various times, the NC and other outfits have warned that the INDIA bloc is sliding towards irrelevance. The events in Tamil Nadu further underline the wobbly nature of the INDIA bloc, which functions without a proper coordination team, a designated secretariat, or a coordinator. In this form, it can be nothing but a banner for floor coordination in Parliament. A reset would require the Congress, the largest of the INDIA bloc constituents, to prioritise long-term coalition building over short-term electoral priorities. The Tamil Nadu events have injected a crisis of trust within the bloc that will not be easy to address. With seven states, including Uttar Pradesh, set for assembly polls in 2027, the future looks bleak for the Opposition....