Rahul Gandhi must win battle within Congress

Rahul Gandhi is back with a Latin American brush of facial touch. Eyes have sunk deep. Curled hair is swept back and oiled. Skin is more tanned. Trademark beard that boasted of careless grey vegetation is gone. Pitch of the voice is moderated. He now looks reflective, with the brash shadow cast off. Gandhi is experimenting, progressing or swinging on the learning curve, amidst wave of personal onslaughts set off from within his party and the outside. He's an enigma that keeps Indian politics enchanted.    

RAHUL Gandhi, former Congress president and the Lok Sabha MP from Wayanad, Kerala, has offered another glimpse into his withdrawn world of thoughts. With YouTube debut, Gandhi has worn the creative attire. He has asked questions. He's seen probing the powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There are subtitles and info-graphics to explain the subject. There is an air of a serious discourse. So, there are maps, backgrounders, anecdotes and contexts to put forth his arguments. And, he stays on China, asking why did Xi Jinping send his soldiers in East Ladakh, for Modi had excessively invested his economic capital in Beijing in past six years at the helms in New Delhi while also as the chief minister of Gujarat.

The three minutes and 38 seconds long video invited rebuttal from the Union Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar who argued the case of the Modi dispensation with 10 tweets. Besides, there was an avalanche of derision from top functionaries of the BJP. The volume and intensity of the responses demonstrate indubitably that Gandhi's experiment isn't entirely wasteful.

THE intellectual appearance of a political leader is as good as the depth of the script writers. For past one decade, the script for him and his mother Sonia Gandhi has been written by a former Union Minister who is known for putting his foot in the mouth too often. That script writer had faced the wrath of even his mother for making insensitive comments about Hindu symbols when he was a powerful minister in the Manmohan Singh government. It can be conveniently inferred that the comments, including the poor needs escape velocity to escape poverty, must have been authored by such script writers who delight in pulling the verbal strings of their aka. So, derision thrown at Gandhi must also largely account for the disconnect of his script writers.

Flower of India's foremost political dynasty, Gandhi is principally an experimenter, introducing the borrowed concept of primaries in the Indian Youth Congress and afterwards in the candidate selection for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The 15th Lok Sabha and the 2009 winning list of the Congress candidates boasted a number of youngsters who rose from the ranks of the Youth Congress. Meenakshi Natarajan, winning Madhya Pradesh's poorest Parliamentary constituency Mandsaur, hogged the limelight, coming to Parliament on an auto-rickshaw. That was a full three years before a policy lobbyist rode piggyback to Anna Hazare to appear as an Aam Admi politician. Rahul Gandhi lacked manpower in salesmanship to allow Arvind Kejriwal to run away with the Aam Admi plot. A dynast would also otherwise have failed to win the plot.

Politics in India since the formation of the Congress in 1885 has been held hostage by the feudal lords. Post-Independence, they conveniently carved out their principalities under the benign patronage of the legacy of Jawahar Lal Nehru. The folly of Rahul Gandhi was that he paid more interests in the politics of the US than the architecture of his party and the Indian politics. His push with primaries to promote youngsters outside the established political families made him an outsider within the Congress. The entrenched had their interests better protected with Sonia Gandhi. She will not speak a word outside the slip given to her.

People will accept Rahul Gandhi if he wins the battle within the Congress. Changing the course of the status quoist blood running in the veins of the Congress is a herculean task. For a change, he should read the Roman mythology more to first take on the feudal lords within his party. Modi can wait for him to win his battle first within the Congress. 

Galwan gladiators

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted anti-China war theaters in television and print to take a break. That was the basic import of his stunning "no intrusion" remark to political leaders in the all party meeting. His audience listened with devotional silence. But limitations of a video conference didn't work with argumentative Indians. And, thus, followed a clarification within 18 hours. Modi and his men since then are working overtime to push Galwan valley to the exclusive ownership of the Armed Forces, and unleash the politics of economy and trade.

IT has taken the BJP a full six years to know the financial details of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The Jawahar Bhavan, housing the think tank headed by the first family of the Congress, is at a stone's throw distance from the Parliament of India.

Tales of the Gandhi family and its (mis) deeds in the Indian politics have been told too many times in the recent years. The larger audience has mostly been yawning. People have demonstrated clarity of understanding of the first family of the Congress. That it's most undeserving to lead India.

Yet, whipping a dead horse is the most convenient political craft of the BJP. The demon must remain alive to scare the masses to run to the shelters of the gods. The demon must also be bloated to hide smaller foes who are territory bound. So, the BJP chief J P Nadda has suddenly popped up in the midst of barrage of questions flying post June15/16 violent clash in the Galwan valley and India's raging battle with the Corona virus to turn the spotlight on the Gandhi family.

THE Balakot and surgical strikes in the wake of Pulwama and Pathankot terror attacks respectively whetted the appetite of the popular discourse for instant levelling (gratifications). The 20 brave-hearts of India who fell on the intervening night of June 15/16 set the television studios ablaze with the men of uniform talking war strategies at great lengths.

Similar anguish in China is also apparently spreading after the relatives were finally handed over the bodies of their fallen men. But China is a private limited enterprise where a regime lords over one and a half billion people. The regime has one sentence statecraft -- power flows from barrel of the gun, a copyright of Mao Zedong, ruler of China from 1949-1976.

India is a democracy irrespective of the streaks of a few to lord over the people with iron grips. Democracy entails questions, and plenty of them are being asked now. The Narendra Modi led dispensation knows well that the Galwan valley skirmishes aren't going to go away soon. The foe here is not a moth-eaten Pakistan. The fighter jets cannot just go raiding in the Chinese territory and drop a few bombs. Within the ruling dispensation this reality is well understood.

"It looks like some media houses, so called experts, think tanks & politically loaded ex-defence officers are hell bent on Indo-China war & Indian forces ultimately getting defeated. Commies were doing it in 1962. Left liberals have started it now," tweeted the BJP's organisational secretary B L Santhosh.

Santhosh may not be speaking Modi's mind, as he in the past has let go his frustration on social media, with an illustration of his rant, the tweet was soon deleted, against Bernie Sanders when he was on a roll against India.  

INDIA and China have an LAC (line of actual control) of almost about 4000 kms. History has seen many ups and downs in over 100 years. The  line of control has been pushed down, deep into Indian territory over the decades, principally on account of the timidity of the Indian leadership. 

The adventurous British India of the 19th century had grown weaker at the beginning of the 20th century. Freedom from slavery of centuries led the baton of the leadership pass onto the hands of the pacifists who were more than willing to believe in the virtues of their counterparts in the other countries. India learnt too many lessons of the leaders' follies. Barring 1965 and 1971, India allowed bureaucratic arms to overwhelm strategic urgency to safeguard India's frontiers, which most steadfastly was done in the days of glory of Ashoka, Akbar and the British.

Modi broke the spell of slumber by giving hard slaps to Pakistan after the Pathankot and Pulwama terror attacks. The western foe may not dare for a few years to force its tactical weapon of inflicting 100 cuts onto India. With China, India may need to embark on a journey of decades. Instant gratification is only in the realm of fantasy.

The saffron auxiliary forces have already been let loose to identify the Chinese goods and build the public opinion against them. The Chinese trade surplus of over $48.7 billion annually in bilateral trade with India in the last financial year, which slightly came down, has over the years nourished the muscles of Beijing. The Corona virus may potentially change terms of trade. India will need to make attitudinal and policy changes to become the recipient of the gains.

ON the rocky terrains, the Armed Forces should be allowed full freedom to push back the intruders, and the leadership should unhesitatingly put the facts in the public domain to cut the scope for the Galwan gladiators in the studios dictate the popular narrative. Speculation on the state of affairs of India's frontiers will only harm the national interests.

Let the Chief of Defence Staff CDS) Bipin Rawat give the full accounts of the Galwan valley to the people. Democracy ordains facts of the day in the public domain, not speculation on India's strategic interests.     

Delhi Assembly Elections: Prashant Kishor's swing management

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal waited for seven hours to file his nomination papers from the New Delhi Assembly constituency. That was a day after his roadshow pulled in a large number of cheer crowd to make him skip filing the nomination papers. The simple filing of nomination papers hogged the limelight for two days. The BJP played along, first by floating the strategy to surprise Kejriwal with a heavyweight challenger, only to spring a tame script in Sunil Yadav, who in his only electoral experience has lost councilor's elections. The discourse surrounding the Delhi Assembly elections have so far stayed around Kejriwal, portrayed as an indomitable and sometimes as a victim of the "dirty tricks" of the BJP, in line with Prashant Kishor's election management text book.

THE BJP veteran in Jharkhand Saryu Rai had long been a critic of the party colleague and former chief minister Raghubar Das. Rai would often put down dissent note in the Cabinet decisions. He would even admit lapses in events of alleged hunger deaths in the state. Das had also long been nursing an opportunity to get rid of him and found emboldened with his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis, who had also purged his rivals within the party during ticket distribution. Rai knew his fate, yet patiently awaited the Central leadership to be wiser.

The BJP Central leadership thought of paying a smart game by delaying Rai's candidature from Jamshedpur (West) Assembly seat. The party would have given the nomination by making him seen begging for the ticket, which, in turn, would have pleased Das. Rai didn't play along the script, and drifted away.

An old hand in politics, Rai had rubbed shoulders with the socialists, and counted on Bihar chief

minister Nitish Kumar as his pal. Over the years, he had cultivated an image of an intellectual within the BJP. He was popularly seen honest. In the face of his party insulting him, Rai took flight to an audacious course. He decided to challenge the chief minister Das in his Jamshedpur (West) constituency, which was among the only seven seats in the state in 2014 where the winning candidate had a margin of more than 50,000 votes.

Rai hogged the limelight. He was a victim. People sympathised with an honest and educated man who was dumped by the BJP at the insistence of an arrogant chief minister. Das stayed in Ranchi. He was miser in mixing with the people in his constituency. He was seen distant and inaccessible. The stage was set for the script of a simple man taking on an arrogant drunk on power. 

The script needed an able direction to stage the act on a large canvas. The director flew in from Patna with an army of 300 assistants. He was Prashant Kishor. His army brought in posters, leaflets and wrote slogans. They knocked at the doors to tell stories of an honest man fighting a lonely battle against an arrogant chief minister. In a matter of a few days, Rai was the only topic of discussion. The ripple effect soon electrified the whole state. Das had emerged a villain. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to cut down the damage. He patted his Cabinet colleague Arjun Munda more frequently in his election rallies. But the damage was done beyond the limits of Modi. 

IN 2015 the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had turned a BJP foe in the state Assembly elections. The BJP brimmed with an all conquering passion to win elections. The saffron outfit was facing a grand alliance of Nitish Kumar in the company of the Congress and the RJD. Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav had become the best pals. Modi was on an error making spree. He sought to flow the river of funds from the Centre to Patna to turn Bihar into Gujarat. Worse, he hit out at Nitish Kumar, and Prashant Kishor grabbed that to run the campaign to send samples of hair for DNA testing. The BJP's well oiled electoral machinery slipped into the muddy waters of Bihar even before the people cast their votes in the first phase of elections. 

Kishor now has perfected text book to turn the victims in politicians to giant killers. His company I-Pac is currently the best political slogan writers. He in the course of a few months can apply smart touches to the images of his pay masters to the liking of the people. Kejriwal is no more seen an anarchist. The Delhi chief minister in the course of a few months, Kishor came on board unofficially with Aam Admi Party (AAP) around August, last year, has been smiling from thousands of his pictures dotting the national capital. 

Kishor has worked on the image makeover of Kejriwal. The I-Pac workers are knocking at the doors of the people to sell the story of governance. They are selling the dream that Delhi in another five years would become a place of their aspirations: free of toxic air, classrooms for all the children, and healthcare for patients.     

Delhi Assembly elections: Data drift holds cues

Predicting poll outcomes by all accounts is a perilous job. Elections are analysed on past trends. Electorates have proven wiser than pundits more often. They aren't prisoners of the past, as they script history elections after elections. Amid the maddening electioneering, data stay firm with serenity, inviting political strategists to steer narratives to help their masters for smart politics. Data for Delhi suggest the air in the city smells of a cliffhanger of the poll outcome. 

THE ruling Aam Admi Party (AAP) had weaved a magical spell in 2015. Political rivals of the incumbent chief minister Arvind Kejriwal were left shell-shocked with the final scoreboard. That was 67-3 and a naught for the Congress. The BJP had the worst tally. The saffron outfit still bears the taunt. Climbing from an abyss like situation of the single digit figure five years ago to go past the half way mark of 35 would indeed be an unprecedented somersault. For AAP, it will equally be the groundswell of popular anger to slump from the level of 67 to 30s or less would be quite a fall with thud. 

The AAP isn't just another political outfit. The party was born after Anna Hazare made the political air of Delhi pregnant with negativism during 2012-13. Negativism midwifed anarchism. Kejriwal proved an undisputed icon of the politics of anarchism. His foes were left guilt-stricken, as they bent backwards to prove their credentials of honesty and probity in public life. They vowed to innovate and herald an honest and people friendly governance. The tribe of Sheila Dikshit, Harsh Vardhan and Kiran Bedi searched for wood when their boats had already sunk.   

The 2015 scoreboard read: AAP 54.3 per cent vote share and 67 Assembly seats; BJP 32.3 per cent vote share and 3 Assembly seats; and the Congress 9.7 per cent vote share and zero Assembly seats.

But that wasn't the maiden electoral venture of AAP in politics. Kejriwal cut off his umbilical chord with his godfather Anna Hazare to contest the December 2013 Assembly polls. The cadre of the AAP wasn't yet properly built. The party was still sloganeering. 

The 2013 scoreboard read: AAP 29.5 per cent vote share and 28 Assembly seats; BJP 33 per cent vote share and 31 Assembly seats; and the Congress 24.6 per cent vote share and eight Assembly seats.

In  span of a few months, Kejriwal built the cadre for AAP, with donations pouring from the affluent class within the country and abroad, helping him to maintain an army of well paid functionaries. With the likes of Kumar Vishwas, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav leading the most vicious attacks on the mainstream political parties, Kejriwal strode as the alternative politics warrior, swearing to slay the rivals in the electoral battlefield. The Congress fell for the trap, and helped Kejriwal become chief minister. That bloated the persona of Kejriwal further, and soon he didn't need the Congress crutches. He read the politics well, and played the victim card to the hilt.

People flocked to Kejriwal, with 54.3 per cent vote share in 2015. His rivals turned into pygmies. The new political icon was born. But within a few months, drift set in the Kejriwal camp, as all those who bloated him into an extraordinary exponent of alternative politics parted ways after much breast-beating. 

TWO years later, the AAP faced the litmus test to repeat the magical spell of 2015. The BJP had been in power in the municipal corporation of Delhi for a decade, completing two full terms. The AAP cadre was mobilised to oust the BJP from the MCD, which, incidentally, has over 90 per cent connect with the people on a daily basis. The BJP was up against significant anti-incumbency. The BJP chief Amit Shah sought shelter in simple strategy; he just told the incumbent Councillors that they should climb the political ladder and focus on contesting the next Assembly elections. The BJP fielded fresh crop of the party workers.

The 2017 municipal elections' scoreboard read: AAP 26 per cent vote share and 49 seats; BJP 37 per cent vote share and 181 seats; and the Congress 21 per cent vote share and 31 seats.     

From 54.3 per cent vote share in 2015, AAP came down to 26 per cent; the BJP after staying firm with 33 per cent (2013) and 32.3 per cent (2015) rose to 37 per cent; and the Congress made a smart recovery from an embarrassing 9.7 per cent (2015) to 21 per cent. 

In 2017 again the AAP got another jolt. The outfit had found fertile ground in Punjab, and was seen on course to wrest power from Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BJP combine. The Delhi drift had its own parallel in Punjab for AAP. The Congress' old horse Captain Amarinder Singh strode high to leave AAP huffing and puffing at distant second.             

PEOPLE undeniably have made distinctions between local and national elections. Chhatishgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand have shown that the electorate can with ease make distinct choices in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. In Odisha, the electorate cast votes simultaneously for Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, and showed preferences for Narendra Modi in New Delhi and Navin Patnaik in Bhubaneshwar.  

Still, the data are significant, for Delhi appears on a certain course. The BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, with the perfect scoreboard of 7-0. The 2019 endorsed the previous scorecard, with scales going higher.

The 2014 scoreboard read: AAP 32.90 per cent vote share and zero seat; BJP 46.40 per cent vote share and seven Lok Sabha seats; and the Congress 15.10 per cent vote share and zero seat. 

The BJP had seen a negative swing of about 14 per cent in the 2015 Assembly elections. The AAP correspondingly registered over 21 per cent of positive swing, mostly gaining at the expense of the Congress. 

 The 2019 scoreboard read: AAP 18 per cent vote share and zero seat; BJP 56.58 per cent vote share and seven Lok Sabha seats; and the Congress 18 per cent vote share and zero seat.

For BJP, the scores in recent elections are 33 per cent (2013), 46.40 per cent (2014), 32.3 per cent (2015), 37 per cent (2017), 56.58 per cent (2019). In the five recent polls, the BJP hasn't gone down 32.3 per cent even when the party arguably shot in the foot by fielding an ex-cop Kiran Bedi in 2015. 

The AAP in contrast has seen wild swing of vote share from 18 per cent (2019) to 54.3 per cent in 2015. The graph is surely not steady. The AAP, in fact, came third in 2019. 

The 2015 elections in Delhi was a watershed moment. The BJP saw 14 per cent vote share knocked away in the face of the magical spell of AAP. Delhi was high on romance in 2015. The level of romance was two per cent higher in 2019, with adoration for a different entity. 

The BJP's worst case scenario could be another 14 per cent drift, which may leave the saffron outfit still with 42 per cent popular votes. To level, the AAP will need 24 per cent of the positive swing from 2019. And, that would surely be reckoned a daunting task.    

Delhi may throw a tantalizingly cliffhanger election outcome on February 11.