ML Fotedar is both right and wrong: Rahul Gandhi is short on leadership, but Cong won’t see an in-house revolt

What’s new about the observation of ML Fotedar, once a key member of the Congress inner circle, about Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi? In his as-yet-unreleased book The Chinar Leaves, he says Rahul Gandhi has serious limitations as a leader and that the possibility of in-house revolt looms large in the Congress. He also mentions that Sonia Gandhi, the AICC president, is caught between the coterie which does not want Rahul to succeed and her inability to shake off her dependence on it. None of this is a revelation. Congress leaders have been discussing this off and on for some time now. Fotedar’s views, however, calls for a look on the state of the Congress and the visible absence of a sense of urgency in the leadership to revive the party. In Bihar, where the Assembly election is in progress, it’s only a bit player. That it is contesting 40 seats is not a reflection of its strength on the ground; it’s a largesse extended by bigger partners in the state. In Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state in terms of Lok Sabha seats, it’s positioned fourth after the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the BJP. It has lost almost the whole of the East and the North of the country. With Andhra Pradesh gone, Karnataka and Kerala are the only states in which it has a respectable presence. In the South, it has been losing ground steadily. [caption id=“attachment_2423766” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Rahul Gandhi. PTI[/caption] Now, none of this is a recent development. It’s a process that has been on since the early 1990s, when the twin issues of Mandal and Kamandal threw up new political forces and alignments and ripped apart piece-by-piece the social support base of the party. The Congress lost the upper castes to the BJP, the middle castes shifted to regional parties, the Dalits and tribals found their own options and Muslims preferred parties like the SP and the RJD. The party is still clueless on how to recover these lost bases. In addition to letting go of the traditional support bases, it has lost the new, emerging ones too. The new middle class and the aspirational young — the product of its own economic policies in the early 1990s — no longer stands by the Congress. In fact, the party has stopped conversing with urban India. It has nothing to offer for the youth. And the intellectual class is wary of it. If Rahul’s speeches today appear silent on these classes, blame it on the confusion in the Congress on ideological repositioning. When in trouble go back to the poor — this has been the Congress’ tried-and-tested success formula since the days of Indira Gandhi. However, while repeatedly talking about the poor, Rahul tends to forget the definition of the poor has been changing over time. It’s much more than basic needs like roti, kapda aur makaan now. A family with a two-wheeler and television at home can be poor too. He appears out of touch with reality and the times. That is the reason he is earning goodwill points by showing up at all the trouble-spots but the goodwill has not translated into votes for the party. The fault lies as much with him as the Congress as a whole. Neither has grown beyond the 1970s worldview and neither feels it’s important to do that. That the party is merely surviving and not thriving has a lot to do with that. Its being in power several times in the last two decades has a lot to do with circumstances of wider polity than any inherent strength or resilience. However, while Fotedar is correct in suggesting that Rahul may not be the leader the Congress wants at this juncture, he is wrong about the in-house revolt. The Gandhi family name no more brings in votes for the Congress, but it still serves as the glue that holds the faction-ridden party together. The party may want another Gandhi — Priyanka is the obvious choice — to take over but it would never let go of the family. It simply lacks the confidence to experiment. For all practical purposes, the Congress is on the sick bed now. Its revival hinges on how it develops a new language of communication with people, finds new leaders, wins back lost constituencies and brings energy into its state units. With no effort visible in all these areas, its future is bleak.