Modi May Be Faltering, But He Still Has the Advantage of Facing the Same Old Rahul

Rahul Gandhi has recently returned from a 57-day sabbatical to the kind of press that would not be out of place for a war hero or a Nobel laureate. He is neither, and is realistically only a reflection of how quickly the public mood has begun turning against the Narendra Modi administration. The television media in our country, driven as it is by the need to find a debatable take on the day’s news, however, has found it easy to personalise this disenchantment in the figure of Rahul.

Whether he is now repackaged as Rahul 2.0, or absurdly compared to Bruce Wayne, as was done by my fellow panelist on Times Now, Shahid Siddiqui—the chief editor of Nai Duniya, an Urdu weekly published from Delhi—based on the Twitter feed of a few Rahul fans, this easy way of covering politics is built on ignoring the past. With Sonia Gandhi hosting a dinner for members of Parliament from the Congress today, there will be more prime time debates on whether this new Rahul is going to be able to lead the party back from a shattering Lok Sabha defeat. But is there really anything new about him, apart from the circumstances in which he now finds himself?

He is no longer defending the record of an administration perceived to be corrupt and dysfunctional. Instead, he is now in a position to attack the indifferent record of an administration that was voted in a year ago with great expectations on issues related to rural distress and land. These issues remain potent in Indian politics, simply because a significant portion of the population is still directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture.

But while circumstances outside the Congress have changed, the circumstances within have not. There are just a handful of states where the party has a realistic chance of winning an assembly election and the only young leaders of note are those who, like Rahul, have inherited their constituency. A Congress led by Rahul cannot serve as the alternative to a Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), only an alliance where a Rahul-led Congress is one of the constituents can.

That, though, does not seem to be the role that he sees for himself. On returning after his sabbatical to a rally on the land acquisition bill, attended largely by farmers ferried from Haryana, Rahul said, “I want to tell Modi, enough is enough.” It was as if the country had been in a stasis for 57 days, waiting for Rahul to come and express its growing resentment against the government. There was no acknowledgement of the role the rest of the opposition, or even leaders from his own party, had played in raising the issue inside and outside Parliament.

Caught up in the hype around Rahul, most of the Delhi media dismissed the spate of pink turbans dotting the rally as a sidelight. The reality was quite the contrary. Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the former chief minister of Haryana, had asked his supporters to wear pink turbans, while Ashok Tanwar, the current president of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee who took control of the state unit with Rahul’s backing, had asked his supporters to wear the prescribed Gandhi cap. When Tanwar got up to speak, those attired in pink turbans shouted him down. Not only did Rahul have to contend with watching his nominee being booed down in his presence, he was also made aware of the fact that he needed Hooda to mobilise a large crowd, even in the capital. If Rahul’s hold over his own party is tenuous, his relationship with the party’s allies is non-existent. This failure to work with others outside his party has been evident since his early days in politics. In his first interview to Tehelka in 2005, he managed to annoy both Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad Yadav, figures whose support the party needed then or in the near future.

In the few days since his arrival, Rahul has already managed to annoy another potential ally. As he held a meeting at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters on 2 May, this time with flat-buyers whose rights were being compromised by the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, a caustic Derek O’Brien, a member of Parliament from the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), stated, “All the opposition parties in Rajya Sabha united five days ago to send the real estate bill to a select committee ... Amused that someone is trying to hog the spotlight.”

The spin that has been imparted for the past few days notwithstanding, as Rahul’s problems within the party and his allies remain, it is clear that he requires tedious preparation and staged encounters to look good, even with the benefit of taking on a faltering government. This became evident last week, when cameras caught him copying a condolence message off his phone at the Nepal embassy.

This repackaged Rahul, who is no different from the old, is not Modi’s real challenge. In fact, if he continues to be unable to build bridges with potential allies such as the new Janata Parivar, he may actually prove to be a source of help. What Modi would really fear is a Rahul who leaves his ego aside to accommodate strong regional leaders within his own party; a Rahul who ensures his party plays second fiddle to a more realistic opposition in the states that mandate it; a Rahul who can use a “we” instead of an “I.”