A SHAKY HAND
A wavering Congress vice-president fritters away his gains. Can Rahul Gandhi take points off the Modi government in the next round?
IT WAS 2009. AN ASSAM unit Youth Congress worker stood mesmerised in the corner of a packed auditorium where Rahul Gandhi, the then Congress general secretary, was delivering a fiery speech. The 27-year-old felt a new sense of empowerment as Rahul described Youth Congress members as watchdogs of their senior counterparts—they were asked to raise an alarm if they found leaders working against the party’s interests. Three months later, that same youth was penalised for criticising a senior leader at a party platform. In despair, he tried to reach out to Rahul’s office, but got a terse response: “Please settle the issue with your immediate seniors.”
The incident is a telling example of why Rahul, now party vice-president, cannot maintain his popularity for long. The Mood of the Nation poll sees a sharp fall in his ratings— while 22 per cent supported him as a prime ministerial candidate in February 2016, only 13 per cent do so now. The resurgence was the result of a new political grammar the
respondents feel Rahul Gandhi’s performance has been good as Congress vice-president Gandhi scion had adopted after his now-famous 56-day Vipassana course abroad. He found his voice and raised the pitch. He invented new term-inology (“suit boot ki sarkar”). Just 45 Congress Lok Sabha members ensured that the government could not pass amendments to the land acquisition bill.
But alas, it didn’t last. Rahul rarely has an alternative strategy when the political discourse doesn’t follow the script he has rehearsed. He lost no time in making common cause with JNU students in the sedition debate but failed in his response when the Modi government and Sangh Parivar changed the narrative to a test of nationalism and patriotism. “He didn’t prepare a counter-narrative and allowed the Hindutva bigots to steal the show,” says a Congress general secretary. In fact, a JNU professor was recently consulted by several AICC members on “how to sound secular but not anti-Hindu”.
And after the blow in Assam, Rahul was quick to give in to the demands of Amarinder Singh in Punjab and fall back on old stalwart Sheila Dikshit for Uttar Pradesh, a desperate attempt to revive the fortunes of the party in the two states.
Yet there is still no sign of the much-anticipated reshuffle of the AICC, the latest excuse being Sonia Gandhi’s shoulder surgery. Meanwhile, the V-P is busy planning his second round of attacks on the Modi government over the rights of tribals over forest areas. But the questions, as with all things Rahul, are: How long will it last? And how far will he go with it?