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Demonetisation has made Rahul Gandhi come out looking better than Modi

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Harmeet Shah Singh
Harmeet Shah SinghDec 30, 2016 | 12:19

Demonetisation has made Rahul Gandhi come out looking better than Modi

Sir Issac Newton's time-tested theory tells us that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. And that's how inertia is usually defined.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's abrupt withdrawal of the nation's 86 per cent of currency from circulation was an unbalanced force that changed the course of national politics, let alone economy. Else, the ruling BJP would have stayed ensconced in the TINA (there is no alternative) factor.

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The unbalanced force of demonetisation also unstuck Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi from his political inertia. Hammered by Modi cheerleaders as "Pappu" - quite unfairly on social media - the 46-year-old family scion swung dramatically to seize on the havoc the November 8 demonetisation brought to hundreds of millions of poor and middle-class Indians.

In rallies after rallies in the election-bound Uttar Pradesh state, he flagged the Sahara diaries that the Supreme Court had already rejected. Still, Gandhi reiterated his calls for investigations into Modi.

In politics too, public perception acts as Newton's unbalanced force. BJP bhakts have skilfully deployed the uncivilised Pappu caricature in public psyche to alter the people's perception of the Congress vice-president. But this deployment creates no bulletproof shield for the reputation of their government either.

Remember, public opinion is fragile. And Rahul Gandhi scrambled to win it when he sensed the Modi administration had landed on a slippery slope with its demonetisation measure. That whether or not he ran afoul of a sub-judice matter is up to his lawyers to decide on.

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Congress president Rahul Gandhi with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Politically though, he met his objective on the burning issue when none other than Modi responded to his comments with derision. Of late, Gandhi has also become a topic of some positive living-room discussions about him.

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But that's not all. The Congress leader has a long way to go if his overall goal is 2019. He, indeed, has broken out of his passivity but he has to guard against his own habit of slipping into hibernation.

I concurred completely with my friend Chandana Bawa that Gandhi must maintain his momentum as a watchdog of the government's behaviour if he has to stay relevant right up to 2019. He has to pepper his public speeches with data mined from government sources and with the richness of Urdu and Hindi languages.

Gandhi, Bawa said to me during a dinner at her lovely home, should ponder over the advice Himanta Biswa Sarma offered to him via TV after the party lost Assam this year. The Congress vice-president, Sarma alleged in May, paid more attention to a little dog than to a party delegation seeking his attention to leadership issues in Assam.

"Attention begets loyalty," Bawa, a former management trainer, told me.

And that perhaps explains why Sarma left Gandhi's Congress and spearheaded the BJP's campaign in the northeastern state to a successful conclusion.  

Last but not least, a large population of India wants to shake political dynasties off.

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So, invoking parents, a grandmother or a great-grandfather every now and then in public speeches carries its own downsides: a sense of entitlement that many ordinary citizens might just detest.

Watch: 

Last updated: December 30, 2016 | 13:04
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