Is Rahul’s party ready for elections?

De facto leader of Indian National Congress seems to be more interested in delivering lectures at Cambridge rather than campaigning

In about 10-12 weeks, India will have a new government following the world’s largest election with around 968 million voters. India looks more and more like it has only one dominant party, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. While Mallikarjun Kharge is the President of the Indian National Congress, everyone knows that the real boss is Rahul Gandhi. He gets to lead the party’s flagship campaign without holding any post.

He is the undeclared prime ministerial candidate.

Gandhi has been leading a campaign called the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’. In the middle of this yatra, with just five weeks to go before the first vote is cast, he travelled to the UK to deliver a lecture to students at Cambridge University. There is no shock, no surprise, no outrage in India that Gandhi has gone off to deliver another lecture in Cambridge rather than campaign in Calicut. This is what is expected of him.

His foreign trip comes at a time when his party is facing multiple crises. His chosen organisational general secretary K.C. Venugopalwas found sleeping at the wheel as the BJP poached disgruntled Congress MLAs in Himachal.

Gandhi’s own safe seat in Wayanad, Kerala, may not have the support of the Communists.

His family’s turf in Amethi and Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh could be slipping away even further. Spending five days in the family pocket borough of Amethi alone could have demonstrated grit, resolve and commitment to voters across India.

But Cambridge beckons.

Is Rahul irrelevant?

Yet nobody cares. You’ll find few even deriding him for this on social media. There was a time when the BJP and its supporters used to create and circulate jokes about him. They no longer do. The parody writes itself. Rahul Gandhi is now too irrelevant to even be ridiculed.

For one excuse or another, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra has been paused several times now. If there’s one thing that Gandhi achieved from the original Bharat Jodo Yatra last year, it was some accolades that he’s at least willing to demonstrate consistency and commitment.

This time, he himself seems to be so half-hearted about the Yatra that he appears to be acknowledging its failure.

For now his supporters can defend him by saying he’s not the party president, it’s not his job if the party is collapsing under the weight of an everexpansionist BJP. But if the Lok Sabha election results in May show that the Congress’ seats and vote-share have declined further, voices within the party will ask what the Bharat Jodo Yatra achieved over its two editions? They’ll want to know why the man who enjoys power without responsibility needs to lecture so much at Cambridge.

Whatever leaders are left in the party might possibly want to remove him and his proxies from decision-making roles in the party. The muted voices to hand over the rein of the party to his sister Priyanka Gandhi will grow louder, whether or not she wants to supersede her brother is another matter.