Dear Rahul: To win in UP, your Hindi has to get better!

After Rahul Gandhi’s Phulpur speech on Monday launching the Congress party’s election campaign in poll bound Uttar Pradesh and the kind of immediate reactions it evoked from the BSP and the BJP, it’s clear that the most important event in next year’s political calendar will be a heady cocktail of macho posturing, aggression, name calling, allegations & counter allegations, identity politics and personalities. In perception sweepstakes as well as reality on the ground the Congress is still trailing the BSP and SP, the two main contenders for power in the state. But through his repeated forays Rahul Gandhi has ensured that Congress has at least become a talking point amongst the UP electorate. The cow belt voters thrive on politics and can easily count amongst the more aware, conscious, sensitive and nuanced people in the country when it comes to understanding and analysing electoral equations. Rahul’s speech indicates that he is trying to make up for the Congress party’s lack of organisation muscle on the ground by pitching himself as a kind of an angry young man keen to take on the Mayawati government. And with the Congress party’s provocative and catchy slogan of Jawaab Do/ Jawaab Hum Denge, the message has already begun to hurt if Mayawati’s angry rejoinders asking Rahul to go to Congress ruled states and then ask for “jawaab and hisaab” ( ask for answers and accounts) are seen as a signal. [caption id=“attachment_131047” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Gandhi family heir’s speech indicates that he is trying to make up for the Congress party’s lack of organisation muscle on the ground by pitching himself as a kind of an angry young man. PTI”]  [/caption] So the battle for Uttar Pradesh has been truly joined and the Congress campaign managers deserve some kudos for notching those initial successes in getting people’s attention. What has also become clear is that Rahul Gandhi will be the central figure from the Congress in UP. No signs of any re-think, hesitation and tentativeness is there in the Congress camp. This will be Rahul’s show and the state elections will mark the coming of age of the leader-in-waiting and irreversibly change all power equations in the party. He will be feted if the party does well. Right now the success target is fairly modest. Anything close to 50 in the 403 member UP assembly where the Congress could manage only 22 seats in the 2007 state elections would be heralded as a good showing. Less than 30 seats would be seen as a disaster and diminish Rahul’s aura and further demoralise the UPA leadership. There are two different lenses through which Congress managers are viewing the UP elections. One of course is the more realistic and conservative approach which says that the party is fighting with its back to the wall in a desperate situation. The other approach is to make a virtue out of a seemingly hopeless scenario and come out all guns blazing making aggression and all out attack their main weapon. The motto thus is: put everything on stake and go full throttle when there is nothing to lose. That’s the approach Rahul Gandhi seems to be taking by going for all or broke. Whether or not this strategy will pay dividend is a question which will be answered by the voters of UP. But he has revealed his game plan by launching a no holds barred, frontal attack on Mayawati and Mulayam and the manner in which they have reacted shows that the Congress game plan of moving the poll debate from the almost one point agenda of social engineering and caste equations to development, governance , crime and corruption is at least making the rivals nervous. Caste equations may still play out as the dominant theme eventually, but it’s important from the perspective of the national parties that these other issues also resonate in the mindspace of the electorate. But for Rahul’s strategy to really have an impact and reach the aam aadmi, the Congress leader will have to brush up his Hindi. Sonia Gandhi could get away with her weakness on the language issue because the crowds understood that Hindi was not her mother tongue. People actually appreciated her making the effort and saw more in her a daughter-in-law figure whose roots were foreign. Rahul’s Hindi is much better. In fact there can be no comparison between Sonia and his language proficiency when it comes to Hindi. And that’s the real problem. Nobody really compares his Hindi with Sonia because that’s not the yardstick in the minds of the aam aadmi. His comfort level, understanding and Hindi oratory can only be compared with any other Hindi speaking leader in the cow belt. Even that comparison is not done by the aam aadmi. It’s just that Rahul’s and Congress party’s carefully crafted message for the UP electorate somewhere gets diluted — sometimes even completely lost — in what appears to be translations from speeches which are originally conceived, thought about and written in English. So even if all the right issues have been identified and punch lines decided, if the message gets lost or sidetracked in delivery because of language issues, the impact is much less. The “ UP ke log Maharashtra mein kab tak bheekh mangege”( till when will people from UP beg in Maharashtra) kind of gaffes are really the outcome of language problem rather than any lack of sensitivity and political understanding. It’s an example of the message not just getting diluted or lost but conveying a wrong meaning and inviting embarrassment and brickbats. So the one big challenge –amongst the several others—that Rahul faces in the run up to the UP elections is that to connect with the aam aadmi, he has to become more conversant with the aam aadmi lingo in the cow belt.