‘Princeling Anointed’, said a Economic and Political Weekly headline alluding to Rahul Gandhi‘s promotion in the Congress as the party’s Vice President. In the headline itself, the editorial published in February this year summarizes what ails Rahul’s political career and with it the Congress’ poll prospects in 2014. The notion that Rahul Gandhi has inherited his position in the political hierarchy of India as a family heirloom and hence does not rightly deserve to call the shots in the party which aspires to run the Indian government for one more term, constantly shadows all his efforts to lead the Congress from the front in poll campaigns.
An Economic Times survey, conducted in association with Nielsen, goes on to strengthen the belief that Rahul is hardly an answer to Congress’ woes in the upcoming state and general elections. The survey which covered more than 8,000 rural and urban respondents in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reveals that a greater percentage of people seem to find Narendra Modi a more fitting Prime Ministerial candidate than Rahul Gandhi.
The results show that in Bihar alone, Narendra Modi gets a whopping 58 percent votes for becoming the PM and Rahul Gandhi is stuck at 40 percent. An Economic Times article, putting the Rahul-Modi battle in yet another (of many) perspectives, says: “While only 9 per cent respondents in Uttar Pradesh found Gandhi a suitable candidate for the prime minister’s post compared with Modi’s 50 per cent, his rating was marginally better in Bihar where 19 per cent backed the Congress scion’s suitability. But Gandhi trails Modi in every category of voters — gender, age groups and rural-urban. Modi, 62, also has more traction among the young and first-time voters, despite being 19 years older than Gandhi.” One would wonder, what then, except UPA’s miserable track record in the past four years, that has eclipsed Gandhi.
Rahul’s political career might have been lacklustre, but it is not exactly blotted with allegations of corruption, misbehaviour or violence. Unlike say a Salman Khurshid, the young Gandhi doesn’t come across as having a huge chip of elitism on his shoulder – you wouldn’t hear him dropping names of universities he attended abroad. Unlike a Shashi Tharoor from his own party, his personal life is as controversy-free and insipid as his poll competition, 62-year-old Narendra Modi. Also, on a good day, he does try making the right noises about governance and the political system in the country. Rahul Gandhi during his rally in Madhya Pradesh yesterday.
PTI However, despite what seems like a perfectly acceptable resume for a successful politician in India – right to the white kurta pajamas – Rahul’s potential is undercut by a gamut of factors. And it starts with his severe drought of charisma – no, not of the dimpled youth type, but of the abrasive, adrenaline-charged, decidedly masculine variant that seems to strike a chord with the masses at large. Aggression, which mirrors the ferocity of dissent and frustration simmering in people, seems to be the key to successful poll campaigning this year – something that Narendra Modi has cashed in abundantly. From taking down the Prime Minister to deriding the Gandhis’ dynastic approach to politics, Modi has made just the sounds that the crowd loves to hear.
Rahul on his part has tried to replicate the same let’s-clean-the-system chorus, but his claims have been rendered hollow by the fact that he belongs to the first family of the party that runs the government. While Rahul might drip humility in public rallies, his speeches point at a sharp departure from the realities of contemporary politics. For example in Thursday’s speech, while addressing a largely rural audience in Shahdol, Madhya Pradesh, Rahul said, “There are more people who go hungry in Madhya Pradesh than in Africa.” He made the rather questionable claim before an audience who is supposed to benefit from the Food Security Scheme without much realising that Africa’s long history of malnutrition might be something that his audience is neither aware of, nor cares for. What such declarations effectively does is firstly alienate the rural voter by talking to them in a rhetoric that doesn’t interest them.
Then, he turns away the voter with interest in such trivia with such misleading, pointlessly hyperbolic information that only underlines the immaturity of Rahul’s political idiom. At its best, Rahul’s speeches sound like a spirited drawing room debate over a cup of coffee – high on idealism, low of practicality. Then again, his overzealous attempts to connect with the masses always runs the risk of coming across as phony.
To rid the baggage of dynasty, Rahul’s bends twice over to assure his voters that he is one of them. In the Gwalior speech on Thursday and in several other previous speeches, Rahul constantly tries creating a ‘them-and-us’ binary. When he speaks, he tries to speak in the voice of the ‘other’ – the ones left out in the malls-highways development scramble. “What is the development they are talking about? They want you to look at shiny cars and AC rooms on a hungry stomach. We want you to live a dignified life on the other hand,” Rahul said. He almost makes the ‘shiny cars’ sound like some evil of a world he and his audience doesn’t belong to. However, even a poor farm labourer will be sharply aware of the fact that after the speech Rahul too will go back to the same AC-luxury car life. Therefore, while the leader-voter breach is a reality in all political narratives in India, in Rahul’s case it becomes doubly obvious. The accusations of incompetence against Rahul again is solely based on the Congress’ performance in the government over the past nine years. While Modi has a fairly successful state administration to flaunt, even though that is no clear evidence of his talent to run multicultural, multi-ethnic country like India, Rahul hasn’t even held a mildly important portfolio in the government. Add to that the memory of his initial reluctance to get involved in active politics, and Rahul comes across as a politician by accident, not choice. To add to his woes are his party colleagues, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh‘s constant reference of him as the Congress’ PM candidate in the upcoming polls. Though neither of the Gandhis have come forward and made any such claims,
the rumours to that effect have made Rahul seem like a politician with zero administrative acumen or experience aspiring to run the country at one go. Does he seem like a convincing alternative to Narendra Modi who has been voted into power as a state’s CM for three terms in a row, despite the riots in 2002? No. A administrator with no experience versus an administrator who has floundered once is hardly much of a stiff contest. The EPW article succinctly sums up the sentiments against Rahul and the Congress: Rahul Gandhi’s mediocre political career seems to have been no stumbling block to becoming the Congress’ leader-in-waiting. This says a lot about the state of India’s grand old party. The average Congress activist is expected to spread the glory of the first family;
the second-rung of leaders is expected to implement what the first family and its lieutenants decide, and the lieutenants are chosen to serve the first family on the basis of their loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhis. And as the twin speeches in Madhya Pradesh, parts of them almost identical, showed, Rahul at times might come across as an enthusiastic youth leader but he is far from becoming an astute politician. One has to refer to the difference in the BJP and Rahul’s response to mishaps in BJP-ruled and Congress-ruled states.
From the communal riots in Assam to the flash floods in Uttarakhand, the BJP hammered the Congress government on lack of preparedness, shoddy administration and weak relief system relentlessly. Rahul, on the other hand decided to bring up a fairly philosophical concern over respecting the dead while admonishing the MP government for two stampedes in five years. He made no mention of administrative failures, no mention of security lapses – he said that the MP government doesn’t know how to ‘respect the dead’. What does a voter understand of him from such a declaration – that he is more concerned about secondary realities in his country. If he has failed to point out the administrative failures, he must himself have little knowledge or understanding of the same. And that doesn’t a great national leader make.
An Economic Times survey, conducted in association with Nielsen, goes on to strengthen the belief that Rahul is hardly an answer to Congress’ woes in the upcoming state and general elections. The survey which covered more than 8,000 rural and urban respondents in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reveals that a greater percentage of people seem to find Narendra Modi a more fitting Prime Ministerial candidate than Rahul Gandhi.
The results show that in Bihar alone, Narendra Modi gets a whopping 58 percent votes for becoming the PM and Rahul Gandhi is stuck at 40 percent. An Economic Times article, putting the Rahul-Modi battle in yet another (of many) perspectives, says: “While only 9 per cent respondents in Uttar Pradesh found Gandhi a suitable candidate for the prime minister’s post compared with Modi’s 50 per cent, his rating was marginally better in Bihar where 19 per cent backed the Congress scion’s suitability. But Gandhi trails Modi in every category of voters — gender, age groups and rural-urban. Modi, 62, also has more traction among the young and first-time voters, despite being 19 years older than Gandhi.” One would wonder, what then, except UPA’s miserable track record in the past four years, that has eclipsed Gandhi.
Rahul’s political career might have been lacklustre, but it is not exactly blotted with allegations of corruption, misbehaviour or violence. Unlike say a Salman Khurshid, the young Gandhi doesn’t come across as having a huge chip of elitism on his shoulder – you wouldn’t hear him dropping names of universities he attended abroad. Unlike a Shashi Tharoor from his own party, his personal life is as controversy-free and insipid as his poll competition, 62-year-old Narendra Modi. Also, on a good day, he does try making the right noises about governance and the political system in the country. Rahul Gandhi during his rally in Madhya Pradesh yesterday.
PTI However, despite what seems like a perfectly acceptable resume for a successful politician in India – right to the white kurta pajamas – Rahul’s potential is undercut by a gamut of factors. And it starts with his severe drought of charisma – no, not of the dimpled youth type, but of the abrasive, adrenaline-charged, decidedly masculine variant that seems to strike a chord with the masses at large. Aggression, which mirrors the ferocity of dissent and frustration simmering in people, seems to be the key to successful poll campaigning this year – something that Narendra Modi has cashed in abundantly. From taking down the Prime Minister to deriding the Gandhis’ dynastic approach to politics, Modi has made just the sounds that the crowd loves to hear.
Rahul on his part has tried to replicate the same let’s-clean-the-system chorus, but his claims have been rendered hollow by the fact that he belongs to the first family of the party that runs the government. While Rahul might drip humility in public rallies, his speeches point at a sharp departure from the realities of contemporary politics. For example in Thursday’s speech, while addressing a largely rural audience in Shahdol, Madhya Pradesh, Rahul said, “There are more people who go hungry in Madhya Pradesh than in Africa.” He made the rather questionable claim before an audience who is supposed to benefit from the Food Security Scheme without much realising that Africa’s long history of malnutrition might be something that his audience is neither aware of, nor cares for. What such declarations effectively does is firstly alienate the rural voter by talking to them in a rhetoric that doesn’t interest them.
Then, he turns away the voter with interest in such trivia with such misleading, pointlessly hyperbolic information that only underlines the immaturity of Rahul’s political idiom. At its best, Rahul’s speeches sound like a spirited drawing room debate over a cup of coffee – high on idealism, low of practicality. Then again, his overzealous attempts to connect with the masses always runs the risk of coming across as phony.
To rid the baggage of dynasty, Rahul’s bends twice over to assure his voters that he is one of them. In the Gwalior speech on Thursday and in several other previous speeches, Rahul constantly tries creating a ‘them-and-us’ binary. When he speaks, he tries to speak in the voice of the ‘other’ – the ones left out in the malls-highways development scramble. “What is the development they are talking about? They want you to look at shiny cars and AC rooms on a hungry stomach. We want you to live a dignified life on the other hand,” Rahul said. He almost makes the ‘shiny cars’ sound like some evil of a world he and his audience doesn’t belong to. However, even a poor farm labourer will be sharply aware of the fact that after the speech Rahul too will go back to the same AC-luxury car life. Therefore, while the leader-voter breach is a reality in all political narratives in India, in Rahul’s case it becomes doubly obvious. The accusations of incompetence against Rahul again is solely based on the Congress’ performance in the government over the past nine years. While Modi has a fairly successful state administration to flaunt, even though that is no clear evidence of his talent to run multicultural, multi-ethnic country like India, Rahul hasn’t even held a mildly important portfolio in the government. Add to that the memory of his initial reluctance to get involved in active politics, and Rahul comes across as a politician by accident, not choice. To add to his woes are his party colleagues, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh‘s constant reference of him as the Congress’ PM candidate in the upcoming polls. Though neither of the Gandhis have come forward and made any such claims,
the rumours to that effect have made Rahul seem like a politician with zero administrative acumen or experience aspiring to run the country at one go. Does he seem like a convincing alternative to Narendra Modi who has been voted into power as a state’s CM for three terms in a row, despite the riots in 2002? No. A administrator with no experience versus an administrator who has floundered once is hardly much of a stiff contest. The EPW article succinctly sums up the sentiments against Rahul and the Congress: Rahul Gandhi’s mediocre political career seems to have been no stumbling block to becoming the Congress’ leader-in-waiting. This says a lot about the state of India’s grand old party. The average Congress activist is expected to spread the glory of the first family;
the second-rung of leaders is expected to implement what the first family and its lieutenants decide, and the lieutenants are chosen to serve the first family on the basis of their loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhis. And as the twin speeches in Madhya Pradesh, parts of them almost identical, showed, Rahul at times might come across as an enthusiastic youth leader but he is far from becoming an astute politician. One has to refer to the difference in the BJP and Rahul’s response to mishaps in BJP-ruled and Congress-ruled states.
From the communal riots in Assam to the flash floods in Uttarakhand, the BJP hammered the Congress government on lack of preparedness, shoddy administration and weak relief system relentlessly. Rahul, on the other hand decided to bring up a fairly philosophical concern over respecting the dead while admonishing the MP government for two stampedes in five years. He made no mention of administrative failures, no mention of security lapses – he said that the MP government doesn’t know how to ‘respect the dead’. What does a voter understand of him from such a declaration – that he is more concerned about secondary realities in his country. If he has failed to point out the administrative failures, he must himself have little knowledge or understanding of the same. And that doesn’t a great national leader make.
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