For the Youth Congress, the target is 2019

New Delhi: The Indian Youth Congress office on Raisina Road wears a deserted a look. Not a typical sight one expects at a youth party office. After all, power in politics is gauged by the number of flunkeys hanging around in obeisance. But to Jitendra Baghel, national committee secretary, the absence of eager-to-please hangers-on at the office is exactly the kind of change that has been brought about by the ‘transformation’ process that Rahul Gandhi set in motion after he took over as Youth Congress and NSUI (student wing) president in 2007. [caption id=“attachment_289219” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Jitendra Baghel, national committee secretary, Indian Youth Congress. Firstpost/ Naresh Sharma”]  [/caption] In Bhagel’s room a smiling portrait of Rahul Gandhi hangs on the wall facing him. Behind him, are portraits of the rest of the Gandhi clan - from Indira to Sonia - and of B R Ambedkar. Says Bhagel, “Earlier, the system favoured those who would wait on the leaders, hanging around them, doing their bidding. You can either spend all your time working for the public or trying to please leaders. The earlier system didn’t recognize those who worked on the ground. When Rahul Gandhi became the All India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretary in-charge of the Youth Congress he decided to change that.” Few will contest the fact the that since he took over five years ago, Rahul Gandhi has fundamentally changed the culture of youth politics in the Congress. But what has been the impact of this change and why hasn’t this massive mobilisation of youth not translated into votes for the Congress Party? “We are still in the transformation phase. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It will take at least two cycles (of internal elections). We still haven’t finished the first cycle (completion of one round of elections in every state http://iyc.in/sns/pg/electionportal). Filtration will happen from the second round,” says the former student union leader who joined the Youth Congress in 2002. In the Uttar Pradesh elections, 35 Youth Congress candidates were given tickets. Only five won. The highlight for the youth Congress, however, seems to be that 30 candidates polled more than 30,000 votes, a significant jump from the 2,000-odd vote range that Congress candidates were earlier confined to. “The biggest achievement is that we now have leaders, we didn’t have any before. We know how hard it was to find worthy candidates to fight elections. People weren’t even willing to fight before. Now we have youth leaders who are willing to fight elections,” Bhagel says. There is no denying that the challenges for this new breed of first-generation politicians is daunting. The bar has been set quite high by leaders like Meenakshi Natarajan, the first time MP from Madhya Pradesh who defeated an eight-time BJP MP by a margin of 30,000 votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Natarajan is now seen as the second most important leader of the youth congress after Rahul Gandhi [caption id=“attachment_289220” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“Kapil Yadav, a Youth Congress candidate who contested the recently concluded Delhi MCD elections. Firstpost/ Naresh Sharma”]  [/caption] Kapil Yadav, a Youth Congress candidate who contested the recent Delhi MCD elections and lost, spells out what the young candidates are really after. “Youth Congress is keen on winning those seats which the party has been losing for 20-25 years. It is those seats that our boys are fighting,” he says. Yadav contested from a ward that has had a BJP councilor for 21 years. “I got 7,200 votes, never before has a Congress candidate won so many votes. I am now the leader of 7,200 people. I’ll carry on with my work.” Kapil has been with the Congress since 2000 and was one of the nine candidates chosen to the NSUI national committee through a country-wide talent hunt held after Rahul Gandhi took over. Despite his electoral defeat he remains fiercely optimistic about the potential of the Youth Congress. The target, he says, is 2019. “If the system runs smoothly and in the same way that it is now and Rahul Gandhi continues to keep a close check – because only then will it continue to work the way it is doing now – I have no doubt that by 2019 you will see directional change. It will take time. Any transformation takes time.” 2019? “When the transformation process began, 500 meetings were held in six months. The funda was clear. Our target in 2019.” He dismisses as ‘rumour’ talk of Rahul Gandhi scaling down his role in the Youth Congress and the NSUI. “His focus is 100 per cent on the NSUI and the IYC. He takes stock of what is happening on a weekly basis. People think he is distracted, it is just a rumour.” Given the decade-long time frame that has been set for the turn-around to happen, the energies of the Youth Congress are being applied to install a solid organizational structure and create a dedicated mass support system. And elections are being treated as crucial learning exercises for first time contestants. Asked if there was a disconnect between the culture of democratization being created in the Youth Congress and the cold politics of caste and money that dictate elections in the real world, Bhagel says, “Real politics is of course different. We will soon go in for mass-based programmes. Issues such as electoral geography and the caste make-up of a constituency cannot be ignored.” Winning and losing elections, say Bhagel, is part of the game. “We are not swayed by the news. Our eyes are fixed on the targets.”