Rahul Gandhi makes way, finally?

Even while Congress spokespersons were refusing to accept the exit poll projections in Uttar Pradesh, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi seemed to have conceded defeat. On March 10, a day ahead of counting votes, he was exhorting the 76-year old Maratha leader Sharad Pawar to play a major role in national politics. After successive failures, reality seems to have dawned on Rahul that he was no match to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when it came to stimulating the masses. Since his mother Sonia Gandhi took over as president, the party has witnessed three milestones. The 1998 Panchmarhi resolution, where the Congress resolved to walk alone to regain supremacy in national politics, had failed miserably. Fresh from the Gujarat riots and prodding by the late CPI(M) leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Mrs Gandhi supervised the Shimla Sankalp in 2003, resolving to tie up with like-minded parties to combat communalism. Then, after a decade, came the Jaipur brainstorming session in 2013, where Rahul Gandhi, recently crowned as party vice-president, urged the cadre to prepare for going it alone since the organisation had floundered in many states because of the compulsions of alliance politics. His attempts to tread a fine balance between coalition and organisation, and also to dump ideology over issues of governance, failed to yield results.

Party workers recall that the last time he struck a personal note with workers was at his maiden address at the AICC Session in Jaipur in January 2013. What is baffling is that he is yet to guide the party in any sort of direction.

Ironically, on the issue of ideology, the paper circulated at the Jaipur meeting suggested not to limit itself to secularism, welfare of poor, and caste politics. But three years and after consecutive defeats later both at the Centre and states barring Karnataka and Bihar, he was back to basics, attempting to build a rainbow coalition of Brahmins, SCs/STs/OBCs, and minorities.

In September 2007, when he was appointed general secretary in charge of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), Gandhi promised to reform youth politics. He has repeated this experience with the Congress. But he has failed to rebuild the party, reduced to a family cult by his grandmother Indira Gandhi. She made the party dependent on the Nehru-Gandhi family, so much so that if the family abandons its patronage, there is fear of its disintegration because of a weak representative organisational structure.

In February 2015, Gandhi went on a leave of absence to an undisclosed location to reflect on the defeat of his party. He returned to take up issues of farmers and mocked the government as a “suit-boot sarkar”, a reference to Modi’s monogrammed suit which he wore on Republic Day, where US president Barack Obama was also in attendance. However, his sporadic outbursts have come across as incohesive and often amateurish. Whether it is tearing up of the Bill shielding convicted lawmakers and terming it “nonsense” at a press meet, undermining the Prime Minister from his own party, or trying to push through anti-corruption legislation through an ordinance, it showed a man in haste, but without fortune. He remained incommunicado to his two general secretaries camping in Goa and Manipur for two days, giving room to the BJP to form governments there.

The party remains in tatters as Rahul has done nothing except making noises about “structural reforms”. He first told workers in UP that the Congress could not revive in the state unless it contests on its own and then justified an alliance with the Samajwadi Party at the last moment. Even though the Congress continues to be a central column for any secular alliance, there is a need to project a leader beyond Rahul to take on the charms of PM Modi. Many opposition leaders have been asking for emulating a Bihar type grand alliance at the national level under chief minister Nitish Kumar to reprise the role that VP Singh did in 1989 to dislodge Rajiv Gandhi. There seems to be a silver lining taking shape with Gandhi himself now realising that he is no match to Modi. His meeting with Pawar could be evidence of this self-realisation, where he egged on the Maratha leader to take the responsibility as the seniormost leader in the Opposition, to bring around all political parties to form a broad national alliance to defeat Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The author is Editor, Strategic Affairs, DNA