by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Harish Gupta
Going by the dramatic turn of events last week that hoisted Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on the centre stage, one cannot but feel sorry for the likes of Subramaniam Swamy, who turned defaming the Gandhi family into a profession, as it seems. Rahul's action mauled not just them.
It showed that many a Congress stalwart, whose claim to fame had rested on their alleged privilege of mentoring the young Gandhi scion, really enjoyed little access to Rahul's thinking. One such self-made 'royal tutor' is Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh who, till a day before Rahul's aggressive spiking of the ordinance aimed at saving convicted lawmakers from losing their House membership, was found supporting the noxious edict with zeal. On the other hand, there were some others in the party, like the Minister of State for IT, Milind Deora, who enjoyed a surprising proximity to Rahul's view on the ordinance. He went public a day before before Rahul fired his salvo on Friday.
It showed that many a Congress stalwart, whose claim to fame had rested on their alleged privilege of mentoring the young Gandhi scion, really enjoyed little access to Rahul's thinking. One such self-made 'royal tutor' is Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh who, till a day before Rahul's aggressive spiking of the ordinance aimed at saving convicted lawmakers from losing their House membership, was found supporting the noxious edict with zeal. On the other hand, there were some others in the party, like the Minister of State for IT, Milind Deora, who enjoyed a surprising proximity to Rahul's view on the ordinance. He went public a day before before Rahul fired his salvo on Friday.
It seems that an understanding deficit plagues most of the capital's political crowd. It was evident in conflicting expectations about how would Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—just landed in Washington and getting ready for what could be his last one-on-one meeting with President Barack Obama—react to Rahul Gandhi trashing the ordinance he signed as "nonsense". Sanjaya Baru, an academic-turned-journalist who got handpicked by the Prime Minister as his media advisor, was trembling in rage at Rahul's "insubordination" and said he wished his erstwhile boss had caught the earliest available flight back to India, and resigned.
The fact that the PM is not much given to surrender a post, unless forced to, did not occur to his acolytes. One of them, an influential editor, sounded crestfallen by the humiliation of his scholarly hero, and compared it to the humiliation of a former Foreign Secretary by Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul's father, also in the middle of a press conference. The opposition, with its thunder stolen, could only thunder that the Prime Minister had been slighted by Rahul. In essence, none of them had looked deeper into the real hierarchy within the UPA, which eludes constitutional definition, and the unquestioned supremacy of the Gandhi-Nehru family to which Manmohan Singh is no less committed than others in the party. It is only a few weeks back that he expressed the desire to work under Rahul Gandhi. And, if the outward trappings of a cabinet system still persist, Rahul, in his 'no-nonsense' outburst, bluntly said he was talking about "my government". He may have been gruff, authoritarian, and somewhat lacking in the civility of the otherwise shrewd and scheming resident politicians of Lutyen's Delhi. But it was undoubtedly the voice of the master and not that of an intern. It was his rite of passage.
He made no secret of it in his letter faxed to the PM. "I realise that what I feel about the Ordinance is that this is not in harmony with the Cabinet decision and the core group's view". Rahul, though not a member of the Cabinet, is included in the core committee which is headed by his mother Sonia Gandhi. It is learnt that he was not present at the core committee meeting, which sits on Fridays, when the decision was taken to undo, through an ordinance allowing convicted persons from seeking election or even continuing to sit in Parliament or the state assemblies. The 'private Ryan' who needed to be saved, in this case, is Lalu Prasad Yadav; a pending corruption case against him is perilously close to climax. The core committee thought Lalu still precious as an ally in Bihar, so precious that propriety and decency could take a backseat. Rahul did not think so. Rather, he hated Lalu ever since he walked out of the 2009 Lok Sabha seat sharing arrangement in Bihar. Therefore, he used the occasion to take a few moves that amounted to bombarding the headquarters.
Rahul is a dynast with a difference. His father Rajiv was a commercial pilot force-landed into politics by his grandmother Indira Gandhi. Rajiv, though had a modern outlook, he lacked the spirit to clean up the party and removed the cobweb of rent-seekers from its nooks and crannies. In 1998, seven years after his passing away, Rahul's mother, Sonia, was hoisted to Congress president's chair because Congress leaders thought that only someone from the Gandhi-Nehru family alone could save the party. Sonia brought the party electoral successes. Rahul's rebellion comes with the promise of change in the style of operation of the 128-year-old party.
Will Rahul be a reformist ? It is difficult to say, as ability to reform policy depends on external issues, like global trade, and the freedom to participate in it. But Rahul has shown his aversion to make compromises, rather publicly. He has an evangelical streak, which nobody in the party, not even his mother, or Manmohan Singh, possesses.
Will Rahul be a reformist ? It is difficult to say, as ability to reform policy depends on external issues, like global trade, and the freedom to participate in it. But Rahul has shown his aversion to make compromises, rather publicly.
(The author is National Editor of the Lokmat group
of newspapers at Delhi)
