Rahul: More courage than common sense

Rahul has shown that he is willing to learn and change, but he still has to understand that coterie politics will not work. He continues to remain in the grip of family loyalists, instead of broad-basing decision-making in the party. His main challenge is to show the public that he is something more than a surname.

Rahul Gandhi, greying elegantly at 47, has undoubtedly outgrown his Peter Pan image. In the past six months, he has found his voice, a measure of poise and confidence enough to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi head on. Throwing his hat into the ring for prime ministership in 2019, however, argues more courage than common sense.

Rahul could have avoided projecting himself as a contendor for PM, for two reasons. First, the Congress has studiously avoided turning the 2019 general elections into a presidential contest. In a Modi vs Rahul scenario, the party is bound to suffer. A dynast, who parachuted into politics 16 years ago and has no electoral successes or ministerial posts to his credit, is no match for Modi, a grassroots OBC leader with a lifetime in politics, four unbeaten terms as chief minister and the first majority in the Lok Sabha in three decades.

Second, the non-Congress opposition has shown no intention of accepting Rahul as their prime ministerial candidate, or even to accord the Congress a leadership position in a pre-electoral coalition. He does not meet any of the criteria laid out by the Trinamool Congress for the leader of a potential Opposition coalition. By declaring that he would be PM in the event of the Congress emerging as the single largest party, he assumes that the regional parties will fall in line. Considering that the Congress will be a junior ally in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra, which together will contribute a big chunk of seats, his cool assumption of leadership is more likely to annoy the regional forces than win them over.

What’s more, Rahul has yet to show himself as a man of vision. He has correctly underlined the NDA’s failures on the economic front — unemployment, bank NPAs, slowdown of growth, the farm crisis, rising fuel prices, corruption and a falling rupee — but does not have a plan for tackling even one of them. To date, he has not come up with a single Big Idea.

Modi, on the other hand, has more ideas than a leopard has spots. Swachch Bharat, Digital India, Make in India, Smart Cities, crop insurance, doubling farmers’ income, etc may not have had the desired results, but at least he has floated new ideas that challenge the status quo-ist mentality of the last quarter century. He has also shown that he is ready, win or lose, to take big gambles like demonetisation and GST.

Rahul must reconcile himself to the idea that unlike his father, he is not being handed prime ministership on a plate. He will have to fight for it, harder than any member of his family has ever fought, with the exception of Jawaharlal Nehru vis-a-vis the British. He has been in politics for 16 years, party vice-president for five years and president for five months, but does not have a single electoral victory to his credit. The Congress is more dependent on its state satraps, like Siddaramaiah and Capt Amarinder Singh, than ever before. Modi’s taunt that the Congress was becoming a ‘PPP’ — Punjab, Puducherry and Parivar — party, is directly targeted at Rahul.

So, he must not only win elections, but also the confidence of the aam aadmi. Only then can he hope to be acceptable to the allies and become a serious contendor for the crown. Rahul’s statement must also have disappointed Congress netas, who had expected/hoped that in case it emerged as the single largest party, he would outsource the job of PM to one of them (provided he or she was endorsed by the allies).

For the first 12 years of his political career, from 2002–14, Rahul did not appear to take his job seriously. He seemed to be more interested in spending time with his friends than with party workers and came across as a dilettante, who had accomplished virtually nothing, apart from a brief stint with a London-based consulting firm.

The humiliation of 2014 seems to have been the turning point in Rahul’s life. “Power is poison”, he told Congress workers in 2013, but after the party was reduced to 44 seats in the Lok Sabha, he realised that power is in fact the elixir of life for the party! The decline of the Congress led to senior leaders like Hemanta Biswas Sharma, S M Krishna and Rita Bahuguna Joshi defecting to the BJP. Many others like Rao Inderjit Singh and Hoshangabad MP Udai Pratap Singh had joined the BJP before the Lok Sabha elections and won their seats.

To his credit, Rahul has shown that he is willing to learn and change, but he still has to understand that coterie politics will not work. He continues to remain in the grip of family loyalists, instead of broad-basing decision-making in the party. Recently, he refused to listen to senior Congress lawyers who advised against going ahead with an impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra. Both the Vice-President and the Supreme Court rejected the Congress petition, to the embarrassment of the party.

His main challenge is to show the public that he is something more than a surname. India has come a long way since the Congress hegemony of the 1970s and 80s. Even dynasts have to prove themselves in the field.

The writer is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author.