Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest in this interview recorded on the 19th of June is an Indian politician whose personal story says much about the fluctuating fortunes of India's once dominant Congress party.

Sachin Pilate's father was a Congress minister in the 1990s.

Satchin himself received an elite education a Congress minister in the 1990s. Satchin himself received an elite

education, including a stint in America, before becoming India's youngest MP in 2004. He was a minister

in Manmohan Singh's Congress government up until 2014. But since then, he's been on the sidelines

of power, a voice of opposition in his home state of Rajasthan, as Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP have dominated India's national politics.

Now, though, the political tide has taken another turn. In the recent parliamentary election, the BJP underperformed. Prime Minister Modi

is now reliant on two small parties in his ruling coalition, and the Congress-led opposition,

having been on life support for years, has been revitalised. Satchin Pilot is still a Congress member

of Rajasthan's Legislative assembly, but he is also a

powerful voice in the National Party machine. How will the opposition flex its newfound muscle?

Will the end result be an era of political consensus or chaos for India? Well, Sachin Pilot joins me

now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you.

The recent Indian election, it was a result which nobody really expected. Your party,

the Congress party, did better than the polls had suggested it would. Many in your party expressed

contentment, even joy, and yet you still lost. Isn't that the key point?

That is true. But I think the expectation from the ruling dispensation, a lot of the popular

mainstream media, was that the propaganda will suffice and people will give a bigger majority

to the ruling party. What really happened was this was a vote by the people to check what we thought

were excesses by the government and the Congress party and our allies together have done remarkably

well compared to last time. If you look at the numbers, the ruling party has 290-odd MPs and we have

...