Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, currently the Leader of Opposition in Parliament, has hinted that he’s not averse to being the Prime Minister in future. His response came to a suggestion by the Telangana chief minister Revant Reddy at a party meeting. Rahul Gandhi is the unquestioned leader of the nation’s top political establishment that has a history of making huge sacrifices for the nation. But the fact is also that the Congress party is down and out in most states and does not have the wherewithal to take on the nation’s ruling class led by the BJP. Herein lies the rub.
NO leader in the Opposition today enjoys as much clout as Rahul Gandhi. The popularity of those like Mamata Banerjee or Nitish Kumar is limited mostly to their own states. People in every nook and corner of the country know Rahul Gandhi just as the Congress has its network even in the remotest village across states. The Hindutva plank of the BJP, at the behest of the RSS, has won it massive support in the northern states – the Hindi belt – since the 1990s, which proved to be the undoing of the Congress. The Congress as a party drew its support from all segments of the society for decades; more so from the poor and the backward communities. While the Ram Janambhoomi temple issue was projected as the rallying point for the Hindus, the Mandalization of politics in the northern states by a set of regional leaders like Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad drew the poor and backward communities to their fold. The Congress party was caught in between these two political tumults. It failed to reinvent itself and take centre-stage as a people’s movement. A lack of aggressiveness on the part of both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi was taken full advantage of by the BJP and the Modi establishment. Perhaps they used the National Herald case etc., to browbeat the “first family.” At the same time, the BJP now draws its sustenance more from the image that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built for himself. Modi, a shrewd politician, projected himself as a representative of the poor. Under his governance, the poor got very little. Wealth keeps getting concentrated in the hands of the elite, which run the government from behind the Modi façade.
The 70 crore of India’s poor would have had a better time had the Congress been in power. Despite all its flaws, including a failure to control corruption, the Congress cared for all. The food security bill, for instance, which ensures supply of foodgrains to the BPL families at free or cheap rates, was one example. Beneficiaries of the rural and urban job guarantee schemes for the poor owe their thanks to the Congress-led government. This helped reach tiny sums into the hands of crores of poor families round the year. These keep public tensions under control. The BJP governments instead sulked for the most part, across states, just as Modi ignored the poor.Operation Sindoor too exposed the limitations of the Modi establishment. In this backdrop, the relevance of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress cannot be wished away.
