Rahul was trying to exorcise the ghost of Narendra Modi

It’s already time for a revisionist view on Rahul Gandhi’s speech at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) yesterday. The first-cut impression of this writer was that he came away from it in flying colours, but as always, when one moves back and looks at his performance in the larger context, it is the warts that show clearly. For starters, it is clear why he impressed. We have such low expectations of Rahul Gandhi that he easily surpassed it, presumably with some backroom coaching by his Congress party well-wishers. We have gotten so used to his confused messaging in the past that any line spoken coherently is seen as sheer brilliance. [caption id=“attachment_687427” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rahul Gandhi at the CII meet on Thursday. AFP.[/caption] Reading from and between the lines of his talk yesterday, one thing is clear: Rahul is being driven by the ghost of Narendra Modi. This could be because the media has scripted a Modi versus Rahul fight in 2014, but the fact that Modi looms large in the national consciousness seems to have spooked Rahul. His CII speech never mentions Modi by name – which itself is a dead giveaway. It wasn’t as if Rahul was unwilling to name anyone: he made frequent references to Montek Singh Ahluwalia , and even to Manmohan Singh. Consider his utterances: Rahul said: “The man who comes in on a horse, the sun in the background, a billion people waiting, and he is going to fix everything.  No, that’s not going to happen." (Read the NDTV story on this) The obvious fear is the growing buzz of expectations among the middle classes that Modi may be one answer to the problems of poor governance. But Rahul’s barb cuts both ways. Isn’t the promise of Rahul riding a white horse to the rescue the exact dream the Congress is selling the people? Every Congressman says that only the Nehru-Gandhi family cares for the poor, and that the family has made sacrifices for the country. Who is being painted as the knight in shining armour, Modi or the Gandhi family? Rahul said: “Give me all the power you want, but I cannot (alone) solve all the problems if a billion people…” The reference to power is supposedly another dig at Modi, who is believed to want a lot of power to move things in the country. But the irony is this. Rahul already has all the power he needs to make a difference. The PM keeps offering him a place in the cabinet, but he has shirked responsibility. No Congressman has ever opposed anything he has said. So why can’t he solve even one problem of the country? Is he worried that Modi looks like a better problem solver than him? Rahul said: “It’s not important what Rahul Gandhi thinks. It is important what India’s one billion people think…I have one aim in life that is to make everybody”s voice heard”. This may not be about Modi, but at the back of his mind Rahul seems perturbed that people have begun listening to Modi’s message. This is why he is using the “voice of a billion people” to pretend that one man cannot make a difference. Moreover, is there any evidence that Rahul is really doing what he has professed: giving voice to a billion people? What his government has been doing is throw freebies at people – jobs entitlement, food entitlement, subsidised diesel and cooking fuel, and now, even free homesteads . The purpose of giving freebies is to get people to stop speaking of their real issues – jobs, inflation, etc. Give a dole and people shut up. This is not to say that compassion doesn’t have a place: you give people free things sometimes in a crisis; you cannot give people unaffordable entitlements all their lives. That is the best way to destroy all the incentives for work, entrepreneurship and an aspirational life. In contrast, Modi’s record in Gujarat suggests that he is not a great advocate of government throwing money at people. Rahul said: “When you play the politics of alienating communities, you stop the movement of people and ideas. When that happens we all suffer. Businesses suffer and the seeds of disharmony are sown and the dreams of our people are severely disrupted.” Here, not unfairly, Rahul may be referring to 2002; since he also mentioned Bihari migrants, he could have been referring to Raj Thackeray’s angst against migrant labour in Maharashtra. The anti-Bihari barb does not work against Modi, for he has clearly come on record to say that all migrants are welcome in Gujarat. The phrase on alienating communities is a reference only to Modi, since he is widely believed to have alienated Muslims after 2002. Clearly, Rahul Gandhi has said this with a political purpose, since winning in 2014 will need a communal polarisation. Spreading fear about Modi works for Congress. But wasn’t Rahul also doing the same thing he professed a dislike for – pushing polarisation in the name of inclusivity? For instance, he talked about how 200 million Muslims cannot be left out of the national calculus. Is it Rahul’s case that all 200 million Muslims are badly off, or only that some of them are? He talked eloquently about how there is great complexity in India and that there are no simple solutions, but when it comes to the minority vote, he lumps all 200 million Muslims in one bucket. There is no recognition that Muslims in the south are not left behind, and that even in Gujarat they are not far behind. It is only in UP, Bihar, West Bengal and the north-east that Muslims lag seriously – and the reasons there have nothing to do with the BJP and Modi. It is all about secular politics executed hypocritically. The simple takeout from Rahul’s speech is this: the ghost of Modi is looming larger than ever, and Rahul is trying to exorcise it. Rahul clearly wants to fight the ghost rather than the real person.