With evening news on TV slowly taking over from the newspapers in setting the agenda for much of political discourse — heck, much of the monsoon session of Parliament was conducted in television studios, so to speak — eloquence has attained more import than ideology or grassroots. At least in days other than those when a political rally is planned.

More so for the Congress, which depends on its bunch of sharp-suited lawyer-turned politicos, handicapped as it is with a prime minister who speaks, if he does, only to allay fears that he would speak, and primarily using most of those occasions to reiterate that his silence would speak for him. Then comes the baggage in the form of a party president who speaks just as rarely, and a future leader forever-in-making who struggles, more often than not, to make his issues comprehensible to most people outside his coterie, or his speech-writers.

And with charges and counter-charges playing out like open season on prime time TV debates — prime time does not believe in news per se any more — the party seems slightly handicapped with the likes of Renuka Chowdhury making news debates look, sound and feel like teenage college debates, the likes of Digvijay Singh not being taken seriously even perhaps by his own good self, Kapil Sibal being a minister unable to participate as a ‘regular’ panelist, the party’s ‘youth brigade’ ministers too suave to effect much impact, and a relentless fighter-debater like Manish Tiwary now having to attend to work at the ministry as well.

No doubt, then, that the party seemed to be out of steam on many an occasion of late.

So back in comes Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the former AICC spokesman mired in a controversial CD row, as PTI reports. "He (Singhvi) has been brought back into the panel of leaders to participate (in debates) in the electronic media," AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi told reporters on Friday.

While the party would never admit it, it's as good as an SOS, as Singhvi had resigned only this April as the Congress spokesperson and chairman of a Parliament standing committee after a sleaze video, purportedly involving him, went viral on social media. He was subsequently dropped from a list of leaders authorised by the party to participate in discussions on news channels.

Messrs Singh, Gandhis and the rest must be heaving a sigh of relief now that the lawyer’s back in the panel. After all, articulation is not the same as elocution, which in turn is not the same as panache. Television needs a bit of all three, and more, rolled into one for the words to filter down and make any kind of impact from among the raucous verbosity that is trademark talk TV, where the nation wants an answer every night.