Yes, Rahul Gandhi is back. Now you get back to work

The media, particularly the electronic media, is having a field day tracking  the Congress vice president's much touted return to Delhi, after a fifty-six day leave that he had sought from the Congress party president. One thing seems amply clear- the young leader is not half as irrelevant as his opponents may want all of us to believe. If his absence can create so much interest and hype in the media, clearly there is much more that can be expected from his presence.

And it seems Rahul will waste no time as he readies himself for a series of interactions, with farmers and a huge public meeting, slated on the  April 19, on the Modi government's controversial amendments to the land acquisition law. With senior leaders and the rank-and-file rallying around him, Rahul will be taking on from where the Congress president left, after her march with fourteen other opposition parties to Rashtrapati Bhavan on the same issue.

Some in the media have been quick to highlight statements by leaders like Sheila Dikshit or Captain Amarinder Singh as "dissent" against Rahul. It is bewildering how a statement endorsing Sonia Gandhi's leadership becomes a question mark on Rahul's leadership. But then there should be no harm, in even having such a dialogue in the party on this issue, until the course ahead is finally charted out. One doesn't reckon the Congress should run an Arvind Kejriwal style "public humiliation" campaign against its leaders, like AAP did against Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, for expressing a view point that is different from the view of the majority or send them packing into some Margdarshak committee, as Narendra Modi did with LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. The BJP's original Loh Purush was not even allowed  to speak at its national executive, for the fear that he might criticise the current leadership. Whereas the Congress has shown historically that it accommodates debates on a range of issues- leadership, economic policy, ideology and strategy.

For the naysayers, who have been quick to write off Rahul's leadership or pit it against that of Sonia Gandhi, the attempt to find divides where none exist will prove futile. The party has been led well by the Congress president, whose leadership was also questioned at one point of time after a few elections were lost under her command. This was followed by many significant victories. Losses and victories are cyclical in a democracy and in the life of a political party. Indira Gandhi's leadership was also put under a microscope when she was labelled, quite uncharitably by her opponents, as a "Goongi Gudiya". Today, BJP's spokespersons use similar words, which must have no place in a civilised political discourse, against Rahul by referring to him and his stint as an "item number" and a "liability". All I can say is that Rahul, much like his feisty grandmother and arguably India's best prime minister yet, would relish this onslaught.

As for the media, "Rahul wapsi" is done. How about channeling your attention to the real issues of "zameen wapsi", "ghar wapsi" and "black-money" wapsi?