Rahul Gandhi is a rule breaker. He does not behave like a politician
Their facial expressions, their kneejerk reactions in Parliament and the ashen faces of the BJP’s spokespersons in television studios said it all. With a worldview shaped by social media jibes and prime time pundits. They had misread the so-called crisis in the Congress party. The hope on the faces of Congress workers and despair among the naysayers this week, narrates a story of contemporary Indian politics.
Rahul Gandhi does not behave like the quintessential politician. He also does not fit into the predictable typecast observers of politics had created for him. And why should he? Don’t we all want to see a radical change in the way the Congress party and our politics has functioned so far? Rahul Gandhi talks of esoteric stuff, they had complained. Yes, he does. Why it appears esoteric to us is because he constantly asks himself one fundamental question, which most of us in politics choose to ignore – "Why am I in politics?"
He wants us to understand his perspective – his raison d’être in politics.
Rahul Gandhi is certainly not in a desperate hurry. He can and should be able to afford to take the big picture, zoom out and take a long term view of politics, development and governance. He comes across as a social worker, a politician and a management junkie – all rolled into one and therein lies his passion to work on processes, not just electoral outcomes. For myopic 140 character journalists and instant pundits, Rahul Gandhi may lack in the urgent and the immediate. Their complaint – he does not get swayed by transient hourly accolades.
Rahul could have easily been like Modi; all he had to do was replace concern with condescension, hang pompous claims of success on shaky pegs and mouth some designer rhetoric. Modi’s dependence on aggression and bluster points to a need and a deficiency that he is trying to cover up. The promises of bright future, so desperate that sometime they are embarrassingly erroneous indicate the need for couching his ambition for power in something noble and selfless. Rahul Gandhi struggles for the right questions and the right answers – and does so honestly. In his own self-image, he is not a messiah with quick fix solutions to every problem and neither a mystic with acronyms for every situation. Politics for him is all about breaking away from the binary of power: of government and political party. He is experimenting with a third way of looking at power, which establishes him not as a game player, but as a game changer. It is in keeping with his record of indifference to power that he can think of institutional change without factoring in political self-interest. He also chose not to play by the rules set by the political system, the media or the establishment – much to the chagrin of all the three.
Had he made a glib remark or two, mouthed the same clichés and platitudes like other politicians, the establishment would have felt less threatened and things would have been the same again – transition or no transition. But that's not what he sets out to offer.
The rules of success are ostensibly set in this world by those who shout the loudest and those who tweet the harshest. To break these rules is to invite the ire of this elaborate apparatus that insists on conformity from its politicians. It takes a true rebel at heart to see the game, understand it, but refuse to play without changing unjust rules.
To some, Rahul Gandhi’s speech at Ramlila Maidan and in Parliament came across as an attempt to oversimplify the proposed dilution of Land Acquisition Bill. Far from being oversimplified, what Rahul Gandhi said is the only explanation of why Modi chooses to turn a blind eye to the plight of the farmers. That the NDA government is under the grip of a few corporates is beyond doubt and needs no further evidence. That the government is paying those corporates back through this dilution can be explained in one sentence - there has been no activity on the thousands of hectares of land given away to a handful of big companies in Gujarat. If the Act does not get diluted, the land will have to go back to the farmers. Can this government afford to displease half a dozen business houses who it thinks brought it to power?