Chappal sarkar won't work if Rahul can't win polls
Most of the Congress MPs I have spoken to assert that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is one of the most well-read persons they have ever met. Party chief whip in Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia claims that Rahul has unmatchable micro knowledge of the socio-political history of each state in India. Yet, unlike Scindia, most Congress members admit that the Gandhi scion faces a serious handicap in articulating his opinion on any subject. To put it simply, he is still socially awkward.
Post his 56-day-long hibernation, we have seen a new Rahul who is not shy of speaking to media or in Parliament. He has also developed a new language and much to the enthusiasm of his followers, his new avatar has got a lot of traction in media. But as yesterday’s comments in Amethi showed, this is not an organic development and that’s where the problem starts. If you are not convinced I have one proof: Rahul still doesn’t take questions from media, he makes his statements and leaves.
The well-read Rahul used to talk about beehives and Jupiter’s escape velocity but the new Rahul seems to be obsessed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s electoral speeches. So he invented "suit boot ki sarkar". Yesterday, he went one step beyond and said India wanted "kurta pyajama and chappal ki sarkar". This is what happens when you imitate someone without having the requisite skills. No matter how well-intentioned his words were, "chappal ki sarkar" just doesn’t sound right. And to say such a thing just a year after UPA, which was known only for big scams, was thrown out of power, was a badly timed shot.
Rahul may have got carried away with the success his catch phrase "suit boot ki sarkar" earned him — his band of 44 MPs forced Modi to concede defeat on Land Acquisition Bill — but he still has to play a long innings. If he wants to challenge Modi in 2019, he must first win the states, especially the big ones. His advisers may have told him to stick to the single-point agenda — attack Modi on whatever the prime minister says or does. That may get Rahul media attention, but even Modi doesn’t matter when it comes to state polls as we have seen in Delhi polls.
The biggest challenge for Rahul comes from his home state Uttar Pradesh which has 80 Lok Sabha seats. But before that he is to face the Assembly poll test in 2017. At this moment the party doesn’t exist in the state except on paper. With 28 MLAs in a 403-member Assembly and only two MPs, the party has to cover a lot of ground before it can ever dream of returning to power in Delhi.
Attacking Modi is fine, but if Rahul wants to create a base for his party in 2019 Lok Sabha, he must put the Uttar Pradesh house in order. On August 17, state in-charge for the party Madhusudhan Mistry was part of the protest against deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. The next day, when Rahul arrived in Lucknow, Mistry was back in Delhi. If the Congress vice-president was to arrive in the state the next day, why could not the state unit wait for a day to hold the protest? Why were two of the prominent faces from the state — Jitin Prasada and RPN Singh — not part of the protest?
Uttar Pradesh is going to polls in less than two years and the Congress house is still in a mess. If Rahul wants to see his "chappal sarkar" happening, he must act now and get his team right first. The importance of a good team can be understood from two contrasting examples. When Rahul arrived in Jaipur last month, even detractors admitted off the record that the buzz was equivalent to the arrival of a national leader in power. That’s the consequence of creating a team under a young leader and offering it complete support from the top. In Madhya Pradesh, despite having three giant leaders — Digvijaya Singh, Kamal Nath and Scindia — the party could not take advantage of the Vyapam scam and failed to make impact in the civic polls. The reason is simple: there is no uniform command structure in Madhya Pradesh party unit.
If Madhya Pradesh can’t wake up Rahul, the party needs to really worry about its future.