By Harihar Swarup
The BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi are determined to make Rahul Gandhi a leader by keeping the Congress Vice-President in focus. Credit also partly goes to government blunders that seem to have infused a new life in Rahul Gandhi’s otherwise not so impressive political career.
It is not often that Rahul Gandhi is taken seriously. But last Monday (Sept 12) at the University of California, Berkeley, he played the role expected of him. It was not the Congress Vice-President as seen before, reading a prepared script with manufactured indignation. He appeared relaxed. Shedding past inhibition, he said, he was ready for the job of Prime Minister, subject to organizational elections. With an image persistently smeared through a campaign of calumny run by the “BJP’s abuse machine”, it is not easy for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress to do the repair job, reignite passion and reinvest in a winning work culture.
The Modi government has made mistakes, yet the Opposition looked too slow and lethargic to politically exploit them. For instance, the GDP has taken a two per cent hit because of demonetization. This is what Dr. Manmohan Singh had predicted. Yet the Congress did not go to town with it. At Berkeley, Rahul did mention Modi’s “top-down” work style but how is the Congress different? Its “high command culture” has often come in for criticism. Intra-party democracy is not exactly throbbing in the Congress. Rahul’s initial efforts to broaden the Congress base and break the stranglehold of it from a handful of established political families raised hope but were resisted and finally laid to rest.
Once again it was a surprise at Berkeley to see Rahul candidly accepting that the Congress has become “arrogant” after 2012 and stopped conversing with ordinary people. He also admitted that Modi was a better communicator than him and even praised the PM’s “Swachh Bharat” and “Make in India” initiatives. Then he articulated the ruling party’s failings as never before: revival of the Kashmir problem, creeping violence in society, the killing of independent journalists, ill effect of demonetization and lack of jobs — issues benefiting an Opposition leader. Berkeley could mark a new beginning both for Rahul and his party.
Rahul has been vice-president of the party since 2013, but by his own admission, he has been playing a larger and key role for much longer than that. Responding to a question on Kashmir, for instance, Rahul claimed that he had worked “behind scenes” and “silently” along with the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and union ministers P.Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh, to break the back of the agitation in the state “for nine years”. For him, then, to stand back now and assume a safe distance from the Congress failing and failure, does not seem proper.
Be it dynastic politics or the Congress’s credibility crisis on corruption and secularism, or its lack of deliberative capacity, Rahul Gandhi is part of the Congress problem, and in fact, more responsible for it than most. Leadership is about taking ownership when things go wrong.
Rahul had doubtless put up a spectacular performance at Berkeley but, one wonders, why he tchose a foreign country to talk about India’s internal problems. This is not a healthy practice. How people of California are concerned about India’s problems? Had the Congress vice-president talked of what he spoke at Berkeley, in India, the impact would have been greater. Prime Minister Modi too had made the same mistake—of talking about Indian’s internal problem—in a foreign country and for that he was criticized.
A war of words erupted between the BJP and the Congress over Rahul’s attack on Prime Minister Modi in his address to the students of University of California, Berkeley. The BJP accused Rahul of “trying to belittle” the PM on foreign soil while the Congress hit back, holding Modi guilty of insulting India abroad.
“The fact that he chose to belittle the Prime Minister is not surprising, in fact, it is expected”. The I&B minister Smriti Irani told reporters “after failing to connect with the people, Rahul chooses a platform of convenience for beating his opponents”.
However, the Congress defended Rahul and attacked Irani for being an “apologist” for Modi. “It is the present Prime Minister who is guilty of insulting India on foreign soil. It is wrong to accuse Rahul of having said anything which is belittling. It again betrays the streak of intolerance and criticism by the BJP and the present government”, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said.
Irani also took on Rahul for his remarks that dynasties were common to all political parties. “A failed dynast today chose to speak about his failed political journey to U.S. Indian democracy gives opportunity to merit and is not beholden to dynasty”, she said.
The I&B minister said Rahul’s remarks that dynasts and dynasties were the fulcrum of democracy were an anomaly as she went out to point out the modest back grounds of President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Modi and argued they rose on the basis of their merit. (IPA Service)