Rahul Gandhi - Has UP called Congress's Bluff ?

One of the reasons why journalists are tempted to write about Rahul Gandhi so often is that he lends himself to many beautiful and interesting analogies. I will try to write about a couple of them below. Hope you find them engaging but let me add a caveat that most analogies are imperfect.

When I first returned from my reporting in UP earlier in January for the Forbes India cover story, my editor asked me how I rated Rahul Gandhi’s chances. I used the analogy of Bishan Singh Bedi’s legendary flighted delivery. Bedi was a master at inviting the batsman to play a shot by giving the ball a lot of flight. The trick was, batsmen often failed to reach the pitch of the ball because the ball typically fell much shorter than expected.

RG’s campaign was something like that. People came to his meeting, attracted by his unusual manners, his Nehru-Gandhi pedigree. But I seriously doubted whether all these people would actually go out and vote for him.

Reasons: One, Congress has no cadres. That is to say there are no grassroots level workers who would keep track of the prospective voters and make sure they give their vote in favour of congress. Two, absolutely fossilized state leadership. Notwithstanding RG’s efforts to unearth young, dynamic leaders, the congress leadership in the state is basically a bunch of quarreling rejects from other parties like SP. Even RG was aware that his state level leaders don’t bother to re-visit the electorate even once after RG’s initial campaign. Lastly, RG’s broader narrative was bereft of any solutions. He told the voters that a lot was amiss and then he told them that Mayawati’s elephant was to blame for that. But this was not followed up by any clear solutions. Instead, there was just a broad promise that “Congress will set everything right.” How? asked the voters. No answers. “Why has the centre failed to curb inflation?” asked the voters. No answers.

RG’s highly publicized, high pitched yet ultimately disastrous campaign in UP was like the road to hell being paved by good intentions. I don’t remember the name of the poet so I would quote the following urdu couplet with my apologies to poet.

Humein apno ne hi loota, gairon mein kahan dum tha;

[I was robbed by my own people, others could have never done that]

Meri kashti wahan doobi jahan paani bahut kum tha!!

[My boat sank at a point where there was hardly any water]

Congress went into the UP campaign thinking that no matter what the results, they can’t be as bad as a mere 22 out of 403 in 2007. It would be impossible to do worse and as such relatively easy to tom-tom RG’s campaign even if Congress got just 50 odd seats. “See, under Rahulji, we have doubled our seats,” they could have said.

But lo and behold, Congress’s boat sank even when there was not much water to sink in. As the dust settles down, we find Congress has ended up with just 28 seats on its own. An embarrassing increase of just 0.01%. Compare that to all the sound and fury. Seems to have justified nothing.

What is perhaps worse, in my opinion, for RG and Nehru-Gandhi family in particular and Congress in general, is the giant snub by the voters in their traditional home constituencies of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

RG has gone about the UP, and in fact the whole country, telling voters how the electorate in Rae Bareli and Amethi has benefitted from the family’s patronage. The near decimation in all the constituencies of these two districts is a warning sign for Congress.

Frankly, even the explanation that Congress’s “grassroots organization is weak” in UP doesn’t really work in the case of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

Since last August, when the Anna Hazare movement galvanized the people, Rahul Gandhi has been in sharp focus. There were calls for him to take over the mantle of governance from the ageing and increasingly marginalized Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Rahul has steered clear by saying that he wants to build the party and usher in a new kind of politics. May be he will. I hope he does. A new kind of politics sounds like something India could use.

From RG’s perspective although, the point now is: he’d better do it. Because Uttar Pradesh has called Congress’s bluff on RG. There is no way that people will accept him as the PM in the immediate future.

Perhaps his best option is to build the organization that he wants to and do it in double quick time since the next Lok Sabha elections are just two years away.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.